Burning Hands
by sophgoph
Summary: Azula has tried-and failed-to make a life for herself in the two years since she ran away after confronting her newly-found mother. Sickness and injury aren't the only conditions she faces with when Aang and Katara find her and bring her to Zuko's doorstep. As she recovers under Katara's care, the demons that destroyed her in the past threaten once again to take away her future.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

The decision to leave Ba Sing Se early could not have been made lightly. Each meeting Katara and Aang had with the Earth Kingwas vital preserving the hard won peace. So when Zuko received a letter saying they were cutting their trip short to visit him, he knew something of grave importance had happened.

He first assumed the meeting had gone poorly, and that the Fire Nation Capitol would once again have to prepare for war. He stayed up late, pestering his advisers at odd hours, planning for the worst.

When they arrived a couple days behind the letter, Zuko was already waiting in the palace courtyard. He watched their sky-bison circle around the sky and float down onto the grass. Zuko had their letter in his sweaty hands. He had folded it several times and rolled it into a tiny scroll, something he did with papers when he was stressed, a nervous habit.

Aang climbed down from the giant beast first, taking a moment to pet him on the nose before turning to Zuko.

"Well what's going on!" Zuko said, too anxious to wait for a hello. "What did the Earth King say! Do I have to send an ambassador? Do I have to mobilize the navy?"

Aang gave an uncomfortable little smile and then an uncomfortable laugh. "No, everything's normal in that department. The meeting went well. I mean, there was something about the economy, I don't know how normal that is but... you know, nothing terrible. Honestly I didn't understand much of it."

"Maybe you would understand if you took notes instead of doodling," Katara said. She was still sitting up in the Apa's saddle, her arms wrapped around something. "But that's not why we're here."

"Well what is it!" Zuko said. He craned his neck to see what Katara had on her lap. "What's the news!"

Katara sighed. "I don't know how you're going to react, Zuko. But it's a relic from the past. Aang, help me out here." Together, she and Aang lowered a bundle of blankets—an adult human—down from the saddle and set it on the grass.

Zuko looked down. The bundle stirred, and he saw it had a face, the only part uncovered. It was his sister, whom he hadn't seen it two years. And she was not well.

Azula was barely conscious. Her cheeks were pale and sunken and covered in sweat. She was mumbling but only a small portion of the noises she made were actual words.

Zuko shouted at a pair of servants to run and get a stretcher.

Katara felt Azula's forehead, then undid the blankets to cool her down. Azula's clothes were tattered and soiled, like they were the only set of clothes she had. No one would think looking at her that she had been born in a palace, a princess of the Fire Nation. Her arms flailed. Katara caught them and laid them on her chest. They were covered in blood-soaked bandages.

Zuko took a step back. "What's wrong with her hands."

"I think they were burned," Katara said. "They weren't wrapped when we found her. They're infected. I tried healing them but they're pretty bad, so I couldn't do much."

"Once we get her settled somewhere she can rest," Aang said, "we... uhm... we really need to talk."

Zuko watched his sister shiver. He nodded.

They servants placed her in her old bed chamber. Katara helped them lower her onto the bed and rewrap her in the blankets. Aang served as her assistant, following her instructions on whatever Azula needed. "Bring me that pillow." "Bring me my water bottle. She's burning up."

Zuko watched the process from the doorway. He was still fidgeting with the letter in his hands. He'd folded it and rolled it so many times the ink was starting to smudge.

"You could help too, you know," Katara finally said to Zuko.

He came in and looked around the old bedroom. It looked Azula had kept it in the days before, tidy, with a few ornaments on the fire-place mantel, her old training swords mounted on the wall. Most of this would have to go, he realized. It was all dangerous or flammable.

"We're going to need to nail the window shut," he said.

"You don't think she'd like a breeze?" Aang said.

"I think she'd like to jump out," he said. "Maybe to fall to her death. Maybe to escape and burn down some village."

"She's too sick to do that," Aang said.

"But she could get better," Zuko said. "It stays closed."

"Are you going to help me or not, Zuko?" Katara said. "At least find someone who can heat up some bathwater and and bring her clean clothes."

Zuko didn't get any closer to the bed. He really didn't want a better view of his sister. He had never seen anyone who looked that sick before. She shivered mumbled and her arms flailed. Occationally she struggled to sit up. She had no idea what was going on. It was almost like she'd been changed into something not human, but at the same time her weakness made her look more human than she ever had. He knew it was selfish of him, but he wished he had never gotten the letter. He should have been in his office, working, thinking about something else.

Azula tried to push off the covers. Zuko stepped forward, prepared to step in in case she attacked. But Katara hushed her, and very gently forced her to lay down again. She was an experienced healer now, and had delt with many sick, delirious patients. Azula was just another example. The fact that Azula had attempted to kill her and her friends several times didn't change that.

Katara pulled the blanket up to Azula's chin. "When she calms down, she'll need a bath and some hot soup, but for now she needs to rest."


	2. Chapter 2

Zuko ordered the housekeeper to make tea for him and his guests. They situated themselves in the drawing room nearby. He didn't take his hands off his face while Aang and Katara told the story of how they had found Azula in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se. "She has a fever," Katara said. "From the wounds on her hands I think, which is why I wasn't able to heal them easily. I don't think she's eaten a proper meal in a while. Where we found her... She's had a rough time, Zuko. For all your mixed feelings for her, for all she's done to you and to us, she... she needs her brother."

"You have to help her out," Aang said.

Zuko didn't take his hands off his face. "When she ran off, I didn't imagine for a second that she wouldn't be able to take care of herself."

"She's clinically insane," Katara said. "Why didn't you go after her!"

"Because she didn't want anything to do with me, and I didn't want anything to do with her. It was what we both wanted."

"Really, and you thought she was capable of making that decision in that state?" Katara said.

"You asked me for my reason. You didn't say it had to be a good one!"

"Well you should have thought of those things!" Katara said. "She's your sister! Not only is she your sister, but she's also a danger to the public!"

"Well If you think she's such a problem, why didn't you go after her either, Katara!"

"Okay..." Aang was trying to ease the tension. "She's safe now. And she's contained where she can't hurt anyone. The past is the past. And arguing about it now when everyone is tired and in shock is probably not going to help anyone."

The housekeeper arrived with the tea, but didn't stick around. Zuko finally took his hands off his face and tried to pour a cup. Katara took the pot from him when she saw how his hands were shaking.

"We found her in Ba Sing Se," Katara said. "In the lower ring. We thought she was following us, so we chased her down."

"What was she doing there?" Zuko said.

Aang shrugged. "Living there, I guess. Or surviving at least."

"She had been for a while, Zuko. We managed to follow to her... home I suppose. There was a charred stain from the fire pit, and something that kind of looked like a shelter. Whatever survival skills she had before her defeat... her mind isn't capable of making decisions she needs to take care of herself. She's in bad shape."

Zuko took a deep breath. "And I'm guessing you couldn't get her to talk?

"She told us she lived there," Aang said. "She tried fighting us off. But it wasn't much of a fight. She kind of... fainted. When she charged at us she just collapsed. That's when we knew we had to take her home. She was awake a little bit on the trip here, but I don't think she really understood what was happening. I feel so bad for her."

"After she killed you? You feel bad for her?" Zuko said.

"You don't?" Aang said.

Zuko took a shaky sip of tea. "And that's it for her condition? You think she can get over this fever?"

Katara looked down at her knees. "I wish I could tell you I knew for sure. She's really sick. Maybe when we get some food and fluids in her she'll be able to get over this fever. But you should also know... well." Katara winced and rubbed the back of her neck. "She's pregnant."

The teacup broke in Zuko's hand. He cursed as hot liquid spilled over his hand and lap and cursed again when he saw he was bleeding.

Katara rolled her eyes and got up to get some gauze.

"HOW!?"

"You smashed the cup," Aang said. "Toph does that all the time. She only uses wooden cups now. Of course, if you're asking about your sister, I could always explain it the way the monks explained it to me!" Aang made a small smirk. "How when a man loves a woman..."

"That is really not funny, Aang!" Zuko said, grimacing while Katara healed and bandaged his hand. "She's not capable of making good decisions for herself! _That_ isn't the sort of decision she's capable of making for herself! And when you consider that, somehow I don't think 'love' was part of the equation!"

There was a moment of quiet.

"You think someone was taking advantage of her?" Katara said.

"I don't see how it could have happened any other way. And I think whoever it was is probably the same person responsible for her injuries."

"Wait." Aang looked at Katara and Zuko. "What do you mean? If he loved her, why would he..."

It was hard to forget that with all the weight of the world on Aang's shoulders, there were still many ways he was innocent. He was still younger than most of his friends, and on top of that he had grown up sheltered.

"It doesn't always work like that," Katara said. "There are people in this world who..." She looked genuinely heartbroken. "Who don't think about other people besides themselves, or..."

Zuko pointed at his scar. "Who need to prove that they're bigger and more powerful then someone else, and they do that by hurting them. For one reason or another. And sometimes it's because they're selfish, and sometimes it's because they're afraid of something, and sometimes it's for a reason you spend years and years of your life trying to figure out but never can."

"The point is, in all likelihood, somebody hurt her," Katara said. "They saw that she was in a bad place, that she isn't in any condition to take care of herself, and when they should have tried to help, they hurt her instead."

Aang didn't respond immediately. But finally, he shook his head. "If you think anyone is capable of hurting Azula and surviving, I think you're as crazy as she is," Aang said after a moment of quiet. "She's..."

"Strong? When you met my sister she was strong, but she's not anymore, not after her breakdown. Now she's just... You guys didn't see what she was like we won the fight. What it was like realizing she didn't belong in a prison like Ozai, but belonged in a hospital instead. It was gut wrenching. You didn't visit her in the hospital and see how miserable she was. She just kind of sat there crying and screaming, in a corner, begging people who weren't there to leave her alone. I don't know what she was seeing but it must have been terrifying. She cried all the time for the first few days. I couldn't stand visiting her after that, and I stayed away for a whole year. She's not strong."

Katara and Aang watched him as he recalled those painful memories.

Zuko shook his head and his hands returned to his face. "This is my fault. I should have gone after her. I should have known she'd have gotten hurt. I don't know what I could have done, because at the end of the day, I don't think I could have even caught her if I searched. And she wouldn't have even wanted my help anyway, even if she was desperate. She would rather kill both of us than get help, I know that. She's evil, that's why. That's what it is. But she still needed my help."

"You should have," Katara said. "But I can't disagree with you there, she wouldn't have actually wanted your help."

"I don't like the word 'evil,'" Aang said. "It's never that simple."

"I don't know what else you would call her," Zuko said.

"Sick?" Aang suggested. "Sad?"

"She's all three." He curled his hands into a fist. "You know, I actually wondered if I cared about her. I actually spent nights lying awake, going crazy over that very question. All the horrible things she's done, all the people who are close to me she's tried to kill, all the chaos she's caused. I really didn't care about her all. I don't _think_. But I still wondered if I did, at the back of my mind. I was never really sure." Zuko stood up. He began picking up the pieces of the broken tea cup. "But... But even after everything... Whoever did this to her, I'm going to find him and have burned to crisp and then fed alive to the wolves. I'm Fire Lord. I can do that sort of thing now. I'm going to kill him, right after I thank him for giving her everything she deserves."

He went to dispose of the shards. Katara and Aang watched him leave.

Azula awoke for a few moments from her fever, her entire body shivering and her head pounding. She lay in bed with the blankets tucked in around her, with the frightening darkness pressing in on her. She was six years old again. At that age she had asked asked Father for a lamp to keep in her room at night. He had scolded her for being a coward. She was a _warrior_ and she'd best make sure that whatever was in the dark soon learn to fear _her_. He was right as usual.

She thought she could still hear him through the thin walls of her bedroom in the drawing nearby. And Mother. They were doing their nightly back and forth. They never thought she could hear them but she could. Their voices grew louder and louder, interrupting each other with greater frequency. They always found something to fight about, or invented something if they couldn't. Often they fought about her.

It took her a moment to remember she wasn't six years old anymore. She was different, the people having the discussion were different. But it was still about her, the same as it had always been. What was to be done with Azula?

She listened carefully.

She needed to know if Zuko intended to keep her as a prisoner or as a guest, but, to her frustration, she couldn't make out enough words to figure it out. It was an important question, but it was also a silly one, because Zuko obviously didn't even know the answer himself. He was so mixed up. With all his guilt and rage and obsession over the past, he would never come to a decision.

There were a couple of clues. He'd had the servants take away her dirty clothes put her in clean silk robes. He'd given her real soup to eat, better than what she'd eaten in a while. But that was probably not because he cared about her but because he didn't want the child to starve.

He'd also remembered the advice the physicians at the institution had given him, and he'd gotten rid of the mirror, but that was most likely to keep her quiet, not keep her happy.

She had gone for months without seeing her mother in the mirror. In those months she had imagined it was all just her mind playing tricks on her. But inevitably her mother had come back, and Azula had known for sure, she would never get away from the image of the lady in red.

Mother didn't come back alone either. Zuko had been with her sometimes, pointing his finger, "You were always trying to take my throne away from me! Always jealous, always out to get me! Everything that's happened to me is your fault. And I WILL find you and I WILL put you back where you belong, if I don't kill you first!"

And her father was there some times as well. "I thought you were the good one. I thought you were my blood! But look at you! You don't deserve to call yourself a fire bender. You can't even keep your own head on straight!"

Mother at least had pretended to be kind.

There were other faces too, some of them crueler than others, some kinder. They were people she had met in the past two years of running of traveling. People she'd known for those few months she didn't see the faces. People she didn't want to see, but the mirror didn't give her a choice.

She thought back to that small window of time she hadn't been plagued by the faces. She remembered what it had been like to wake up in the morning, to go through her day without difficulty, and to go to bed and actually be able to sleep. She remembered that feeling that it was safe to close her eyes.

That feeling would never happen again.

But Zuko had made sure there was no mirror, which meant maybe she'd be able to sleep tonight at least.


	3. Chapter 3

Katara went again that night to check on Azula. Her fever was dangerously high. She soaked some rags and laid them over her patient's forehead, then sat her up to pour some more soup down her throat. Then she laid her back down and tucked her into the blankets.

She would need someone to watch her day and night. Zuko surprised Aang and Katara when he volunteered to take the last night shift. By watching her as she slept it was a way he could help without having to interact with her. When it was over, he had all his appointments with his advisers canceled and went to lock himself in his bedchamber. Azula hadn't gotten any better overnight, and he wanted privacy while he processed the very real possibility his sister could die. Aang and Katara tried to talk to him but he didn't want their help.

Katara finally convinced him to come out later that afternoon when she needed help changing Azula's bandages.

Azula would not allow Katara to touch her hands. The moment Katara tried tugging at the soiled gauze Azula cried out. Even in her sickness she was capable of generating a strong, directed fire blast. She burned off the canopy of the bed and Katara had to rush to put it out before either of them were burned. Even an experienced healer sometimes needed a second pair of hands.

So Katara left Azula in her room and went to find Zuko. "Maybe you know how to calm her down," she said to him through his doorway.

Katara heard him sigh. "You want me to talk to her or something. It's not going to work. She can't tell reality from fantasy."

"Just calm her down. Comfort her or... You know her, you would know how to do that better than I would."

" _Comfort_ her? You want me to _what_?"

"Just help me."

He sighed again and came to the door, without bothering to tie back his hair or change out of his pajamas. "I don't know how to do that any better than you do," he said. "I haven't spent real time with her since I was 13 years old, Katara. But I can help."

Azula sat up in bed, eying the locked door. She wanted to faint from the searing pain coming from her wrist where the peasant healer had tried to tear off the gauze. She could hardly move them. They were completely useless. They throbbed with pain. They actually hadn't stopped throbbing since she'd injured them. But they could still fire-bend, and though just sitting up made her light-headed, she would be ready to fight when Katara came back.

She would not allow the water-tribe peasant to touch her if she could help it.

"You have to understand, a burn like that is one of the most painful things you can imagine."

It was Zuko, just outside the door. Azula's blood boiled. The healer couldn't have sent for one of the servants to hold her down?

"Actually getting burned is just the first part of the pain. It hurts a long time afterwords," Zuko said. "Your skin has to grow back from scratch, and its very tender. The bandage can stick to the new skin, so peeling it off can be particularly unpleasant. I'm not surprised she's putting up a fight."

Katara let out a small snort. "You've changed people's bandages?"

There was a pause.

Zuko deepened his voice. "I'm going to assume that was a cruel joke."

"Oh," Katara said. "Because your... Sorry..."

"Whatever," he said. He opened the door without knocking.

Azula made eye contact with him, raising her hands. "You two won't touch me!" she said, with a weak raspy voice.

"Look, Azula, it's your wounds that are making you sick. Just let us help you!" Katara said.

"She's not the type of person you can reason with," Zuko said. "She doesn't think."

"You don't know that," Azula said, revealing just a small glance of lucidity that made Zuko take a step backwards.

"Well then go over there and calm her down!" Katara said.

Azula raised her hands higher. Zuko glared back at her. He stared at her for a good 30 seconds, in a stand off. He didn't move. Katara realized that he had been honest, he had no idea how to calm her down at all. He probably hadn't hugged her even once in his life. Zuko saw an opening. He rushed at the bed, and with one swift, unified motion, grabbed Azula by her arm, pulled her hands behind her back, and pinned her on her stomach.

She screamed and tried to break lose, but couldn't.

"Do it, as fast as you can," Zuko said. "But don't rush too much, you don't want to torture her."

"That's not 'calming her down,'" Katara said, fetching the bowl of water and the fresh gauze.

"You won't be able to do this when much bigger, Zuko," Azula said.

"We don't have a choice about this!" Zuko said. "Neither do you!"

Katara got to work on the bandages. First she used water to keep Azula's hands from becoming too hot to touch. Then she slowly got to work peeling the soiled bandages off the burnt, infected tissue. Azula screamed and protested, fighting with the little strength she had. Angry tears rolled down her cheeks.

"I will get out of this room!" she said. "I will kill you. Both of you!"

Zuko held onto her arms tighter. His face was growing red. "You know! You could be a little more grateful! We're trying to help you! So just shut up!"

Katara clenched her jaw. She finally had old bandages off. Azula's hands, swollen, red and black, looked unreal. The ferocity and cruelty with which she had been burned struck Katara again. It was an image that would be forever burned into her head.

"You can't do this to me!"

"I'm almost done, Azula, I promise..." Katara said. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. She used the remaining water to clean the wounds and heal them as best as she could. The healing water was not soothing or pain relieving as many people believed. That was the most painful part. The healing energy had to penetrate deep into the muscle. The fact the wounds were infected made it more painful and less effective. Then she gently covered the wounds with some ointments and wrapped them up again.

Zuko let go, and quickly they ran for the door.

Azula was left inside, screaming with fury. Though her sick, tired voice couldn't generate as much volume as she would have liked, the hatred and sense of betrayal was easy to hear.

Zuko quickly locked the door behind them, then slumped down to the hallway floor. "Her hands... I hadn't realized how bad they were. You think she'll actually be able to use them again?"

But Katara didn't answer. She was angry. "How hard is that, just to be a familiar face, let her know you have her best interest at heart!"

"You shouldn't have come to me."

"Who else was I supposed to ask..." Katara paused. "You didn't even try! The way you were acting..."

He rubbed his temples.

"It was kind of cruel..." she said.

Zuko put his ear against the door, listening to Azula's sick, raspy sobs. His eyes widened.

Katara watched him and waited for him to reply.

Slowly he got to his feet. "I know it was." He shook his head. "I can't believe I made her suffer through that. I should have stayed calm at least."

"Yes," Katara said. "You should have."

He continued to listen through the door.

"Well, what's done is done," she said. "The question is... are you okay?"

He was quiet for a second. "No," he said.

She watched him continue to rub his temples. "Is there... something I can do about it?"

He headed back down the hallway. "No."

Katara listened to her patient sob and gasp on the other side of the door, wishing she didn't feel so guilty.


	4. Chapter 4

It was a week before Azula's Fever dissipated. Even though she was now better, she still looked frighteningly pale and thin. She announced her recovery when Katara was trying to feed her soup. With her bandaged hands, she grabbed the bowl from her caretaker and insisted on feeding herself.

Katara watched her sip from the bowl. When Azula had been sick and incoherent, she had been just one more patient, but now that she was awake Katara remembered how dangerous Azula actually was. It wasn't just that she was a fire bender, it was her cold expression, the fact she knew how dangerous she was, even when she was weak.

"You don't have to do everything on your own," Katara said. "I'm here to help."

"My brother asked you to be my nursemaid, didn't he?" Azula said. "I suppose that doesn't surprise me. When I decide to rid myself of you, you can defend yourself a little longer than the family physician can."

Katara didn't answer, still struggling to look unafraid. "Well... Azula... You are in good hands. I've started working as a healer almost full time since you and I last... spoke... I have experience with all types of diseases, and with mothers and children too... you did know..."

"I'm aware of what happens to my own body. You'd best not patronize me if you want me to tolerate your presence for any extended period of time." She finished the rest of the soup, set the bowl on her night stand. Then she looked down at her bandaged hands and tried to wriggle her fingers, but couldn't. She huffed, as if it were just a small inconvenience, as if she wasn't in any pain at all.

She swung her feet out of bed and stepped onto the floor. Slowly she got to her feet. She leaned on the nightstand to get some balance but refused to let Katara help her. "Are you going to stand there and gape like a fish or are you going to find me some clean clothes?"

"Are you sure you don't want to rest a little more?"

"I've been resting for several days. What I want is the red dress from my wardrobe. The one that has the golden trim." Azula stumbled over to the wash basin, then looked down at her bandaged hands and snarled. There wasn't much she could do with out their use. "And you're going to help me get dressed."

"You don't need to get dressed now," Katara said. "You just woke up. You need to regain your strength."

"Where is Zuko? Barricaded in Father's office, sulking, I presume?" Azula said. "The dress!"

"What exactly are you planning to do to him when you find him?" Katara said.

Azula huffed. "I'm not planning his murder. As much as much as he enjoys watching me suffer, it will be easier for me if we start by talking business."

"What type of business, surely it can't be that important right after you've come back from the brink of death.

"Business regarding my future. Zuko is my legal guardian," Azula said, turning to face Katara. "You see, unlike your backwards unsophisticated tribe, we in the fire nation have respect for the rule of law. It requires paper work in order to strip another human being of his or her rights. Do to my 'mental incompetence' I was in need of a legal guardian. Normally that role would be filled by a parent, but my father is imprisoned and that horrible woman who gave birth to me was missing in action. So the role went to my pimple-faced, crackly-voiced brother. I watched him sign the papers myself. That was a pleasant afternoon. And now that he has once again got me in his hands, I need to speak to him."

"I could bring him here?" Katara said.

"And send him the message I'm content to be imprisoned in this room, that I'm too weak to initiate these things myself? I will find him with my own two feet. I will pull him from a formal Council meeting if I must. Don't make me ask you again, commoner. Go into my wardrobe and find the dress."

Katara narrowed her eyes. It was highly unlikely she could change Azula's mind. She went into the nearby wardrobe to look for the dress.

The wardrobe was filled with a range of fine elegant silks to simpler to hardier clothes fit for battle, but it was also filled with dust. It had been more than two years since any of these clothes had been worn. But the dress was there. "Are you going to tell me what happened to your hands?" Katara said.

"Unless it will expedite their treatment, it isn't your place to ask."

"It might not help me treat them, but we need to know what happened so that whoever gave you those burns can can be stopped from doing it to anyone else."

"The cooking fire has been brought to justice. I put it out myself."

"Cooking fires don't leave burns that intense. It wasn't the same person who's responsible for the baby, is it?"

Azula clenched her teeth. "A twist of fate like this, it could have only been my mother, behind all of this. You know what she's like. Constantly altering my destiny in front of me, foiling my plans, manipulating those around me. I suppose she's... well... she's trying to make me more like her. We'll see how that works."

"It doesn't have a _dad_?"

"Of course it does, but he's no one you know. " Azula said. "And by the way. You scanned me, somehow, with your healing water or something of that nature. No one told you about the child. It was a gross violation of my privacy. Just like these time wasting questions. Again, Snow Peasant, if you expect me to tolerate your presence for any period of time, you'll learn some basic respect. I've humored you for too long this morning. Get one of the servants to bring me some bath water on your way out."

Katara knew that Azula's cold tone was nothing she shouldn't have expected. She had been easier to be around when she was sick. But Katara far preferred being treated like a servant to the fear of not knowing if her friend's sister would make it through the night. "And just so you know," she told Azula. "I volunteered to be here. And I can leave whenever I want. So you had best treat me with a little respect as well."

When Katara found Zuko he was talking with Aang, who had finally convinced him to come out of his room and meet with his advisers. Though he was cleaned up and dressed in his formal robes, he knew it was plainly obvious how tired and frazzled he was. He knew Azula would pick up on this as soon as she saw him. The only way he could to make it less confrontational was to bring her some tea.

Azula's guards were waiting outside the office, no doubt at her request. They were still used to taking orders from her from the days of old. Zuko went into a small panic when he imagined what she could be doing in there alone, riffling through his documents, setting up an ambush, escaping out the window. He would have to scold the guards later.

Azula had chosen a pose she had assumed would be intimidating, sitting behind his desk with her legs crossed, as if it was hers. In her hand she had the letter Aang and Katara had sent ahead of them, though she seemed less interested in its contents than in the way Zuko had folded it and wrinkled beyond legibility.

She set down the paper quickly and sat up straighter when he entered, almost like he had startled her. But as soon she saw the tea tray in his hands and the unsure, exhausted expression on his face she lowered her eyebrows. "The amount of clutter in this room is absolutely shameful, Zuko" she said.

He ignored that. "I brought some tea. I figured it's been a while since you've had any."

"What makes you think I want any of that."

"I know what that tea is, Zuko. It's a bribe. You want something from me and I will have no part of it."

"You know, Azula," Zuko sad. "Sometimes tea isn't a bribe. Sometimes people who are normal and healthy and stable do nice things for their loved ones out of the kindness of their hearts."

"You display great hubris placing yourself in the 'normal, healthy' category. You also display hubris coming to me in Father's formal robes, expecting to command my respect. Did you even have them brought in at the waist before you had yourself coordinated in them?"

"No, I had new ones made," he said.

"Well, they don't fit," she said. "But enough of that. I have three very specific things I want, Zuko. I've come to you to assert my right to have a say in my own future. And you're going to listen."

"If you want me to give you a position in the court, or the military, or money for travel, I'm not playing along, Azula. Even if you weren't as sick as you are, I still would have no reason to trust you."

"Your presumptions on me give me more information about you than about myself," she said. "You have never thought that maybe at the end of the day, the things I want, truly want, are no different from the things you want for yourself."

"You and me are nothing alike."

"We both have lungs full of air and veins full blood. Just like everyone else. There are some things everyone wants."

"Not everyone wants to have unlimited power and to kill their own mothers, Azula."

"Again, with the presumptions." Azula sighed. "The first of my demands is this. You will not send me back to the institution. They treated me like an animal there. I will not go back, not before the child is born, not after." She stopped. "Zuko! Are you going to stop pacing or are you going to sit down and listen?"

"You're in my seat."

"Then sit in 'mine,'" she said.

"I can't make any promises about not sending you back," he said. "It depends on whether or not you cooperate here at home. The staff and I can only handle so much."

"I don't want promises. I want definitive action," she said. "Sit!"

He finally stopped pacing and sat. "Fine. I'll think about it."

"The next one is quite a logical follow up. If I'm not at the hospital, I can expect I'm staying here. You will allow me to walk about the palace freely. Each time you or that healer comes to see me you always lock the door behind you when you leave. I want that to stop."

"I see you've already taken that privilege," he said. "Which is a HIGHLY conditional one, I should add."

"Without the guards," she said. "This is my own home, after all. As a child, I broke vases in these halls and stole pastries from this very kitchen. You were there."

He sat up a little taller. "That request is one I can't grant, Azula."

She huffed. "What could I possibly be planning?"

"I don't know," he said. "But I need more time to trust you, considering your... history. If you're bored, I can arrange to have books sent to your room."

Her face changed. "Do not patronize me!" She flung the tray of hot tea off the desk and onto the floor. It shattered. Zuko jumped. The noise gave Azula a boost of confidence. "If you want to keep me as your prisoner, then spare me the dignity of some basic sincerity, and throw me into a proper prison like you did our Father. But if I am your guest, then treat me as a guest and let me take a walk every now and then. I am not a child and I am not some pet! Do you understand!"

He lowered his voice and chose his words carefully. "Azula. That teapot on the floor is the exact reason we can't allow you to wander around. I don't think you're a child. But you're not well."

"And my illness is an invention of yours to humiliate and subjugate me. It's your excuse to keep me prisoner as revenge for the fact we happened to fight on different sides of the war. You enjoy this. Don't deny it."

"I keep you here for your own sake, Azula," he said.

Azula leaned forward on the desk. Her breath becoming rapid and heavy from growing anger.

"The third, request. This child. I get to decide what happens to it after it's born. Heaven knows I'm not going to keep it. But its still mine and I have a right to determine where it is sent and who is stuck with its care."

Zuko hadn't prepared to hear the last one. It surprised him to learn she had any level of understanding over her situation. It surprised him any more she wanted any type of involvement with the baby at all.

"Katara told you about the baby?"

"I already knew. Of course. Do you think I'm so far gone I can't tell what's happening to my own body?"

"You refused to let us change your bandages on your badly burned hands. I don't care to think how far gone you are."

She stared him in the eye. "I'm not so far gone that I don't know my rights."

"I'm going to have to think about this," Zuko told her. "It will be what your decision actually is at the time you make it, and if you're in any condition to make it. I'm going to need some time, Azula."

Azula sat back down and gritted her teeth.

"Of course it will," she said. "And before that time is up I know exactly what will happen. You'll ship me back to the hospital. You'll ship the child off to some far unknown corner of the globe—or keep it here—not that it well matter because you'll never bother telling me. I'm insane and it doesn't matter what I want or how I feel." Her heavy breaths were becoming shaky, and her voice higher pitched. "You'll forget about me. Just like you did before. Just like everyone always does."

"Stop overreacting! You should listen to yourself talk sometime, Azula. The things you believe make absolutely no sense!" he said. Maybe he should picked something kinder to say, but she wouldn't have believed it. "I'm here to help you! I've always had your best interest at heart. You're my sister. You're my responsibility and I'm not going to forget you."

"You claim to have my best interest at heart, and you can't even grand me tree simple requests," she said, her voice now cracking. She became stiff with raw anger.

Zuko knew he had a crisis on his hands. He lowered his voice. He knew it was far too late to calm her down but he had to try. What had he done? "There's a kid involved. Nothing is simple."

"But it's not your child." she said. "Its three simple requests. I promise you they are the same things you would want if you were in my situation."

He felt a wave of guilt ran over him, but there wasn't anything he could do to make it better. "I'm sorry, Azula," he said. "We'll talk about this some other time. Maybe you'd like to go back to your room and rest."

He got to his feet, but as soon as he did, a wave of heat flew over his shoulder. He turned and saw the curtain of the window behind him burning."

Azula got up and stepped out from behind the desk. She stumbled forward, stepping on the shards of the broken tea set, but ignoring the pain.

"I knew you'd do this!" she said, taking another shot at his head.

He didn't step out of the way in time. She managed to get his arm. Now that she was no longer sick, there was no way he could outfight her. She jumped on him and wrapped her burning hands around his neck. Her bandages fell off in cinders. He cried out in pain as he struggled to free himself. She knocked a stack of papers off the desk as she pinned him to the floor.

"I knew you would do this!" she repeated. "You'll betray me like you did before. Like everyone does. Three simple requests that I be treated like a human being... and you can't even do that!"

Finally she let go when she was knocked off of him. Katara was standing in the doorway. She'd used the water from her canteen to freeze Azula to the floor. She used the puddle of tea on the floor to extinguish the curtains.

Azula, with her hands and feet restrained in ice, glared at Katara. The guards came in and grabbed her by the arms. After that it was only a matter of moving Azula from one restraint to another.


	5. Chapter 5

"I understand why she's upset." Zuko was sitting up on a stool with his singed collar pulled away from his neck so that Katara could look at the burns. He spoke quickly, his knee bouncing up and down with anxiety. "She used to be so strong, something worthy of respect. Not a 'good' person, but one you could respect. And now she's just... It has to be humiliating for her. And she's never going to understand why she can't go back."

"Fresh burns like these, I should be able to clear them up with minimal scaring." Katara applied the healing water on the burns.

Zuko winced as the energy penetrated deep into his skin. "If I'm going have Azula living in my house, I suppose I'm going to have to get used to these type of burns. There's not much way around it. I have to give my tailor a raise because I have a feeling this isn't the first set of clothes I'm going to have to replace."

Aang was nearby laying on the couch, playing with the marbles he carried around in his pocket. "We all know she's sick. But you've never thought about trying to make her _better,_ " he said. "I mean, I don't know if that's possible. But if it was..."

"It wouldn't change a thing," Zuko said. "Underneath all her madness she's still dangerous and manipulative, and corrupt..."

"Well, you can't fix evil," Aang said. "But you can fix crazy. Or was it the other way around. Either was, we can fix one and figure out which part of her is which. Maybe even fix both."

"Either way she's not going to play along," Zuko said. "You're as far gone is she is if you think either one is possible."

"We fixed you," Katara said. "You were pretty far gone. You just needed to see things from a different perspective."

"Crazy or Evil," Aang said, "No one's _completely_ one of those. It just depends on... giving them a reason to bring out their best..."

"Did you come up with that wishy washy stuff meditating in the spirit world?" Zuko said. "Or did those monks teach you that?"

"Neither one. I just come out of my room and talk to people some times. You should try it some time, Zuko. You learn a lot." Aang tossed his marbles in the air and caught them, then returned them to his pocket. "You just got to make her realize how miserable she is, and then show her it doesn't have to be that way."

Azula knew what would happen when someone came to take off the straight jacket. They would ask her if she had calmed down, and she would nod meekly, and then as soon as she was free of that, they strap her to the bed. She had asked Zuko for a little bit of freedom, and in exchange she had once again found herself tethered even more. She didn't protest when they came to move her.

While she was restrained a succession of servants came into the room and began modifying it. They stripped the wallpaper and tapestries off the wall and the carpet off the floor. The canopy over her bed , the curtains on her windows and most of her trinkets and ornaments were taken away. Anything flammable except for the bed itself was removed. The nailed-shut window was augmented with metal bars. The door received a new bolt. She sat on the bed in her restraints watching helplessly as her semi-comfortable bedroom was converted into a barren barn-stall.

"I'm sorry, Princess," said one of her maid-servants as she unpacked the clothing from Azula's wardrobe and loaded it into a trunk to take elsewhere. "But we'll finish soon. We'll be out of your hair and let you rest." She wasn't even apologizing for the modifications, only for the noise it made.

Most of the time the noise wasn't the worst part. But the noise of the people in the room was not nearly as terrible as the noise of the people who were not. Her parents were still arguing in the hall. Their back and forth, interrupting each other. The bangs and crashes of the fight mixing in with the hammering and clattering of the redecoration.

Mother came into the bedroom, sat down on the bed and stroked Azula's hair, speaking softly. She did this often, coming in, to tell her it was just a fight, that it would be resolved, and nothing would change because of it. It would be okay. Of course, in the end Mother had never kept her word and had disappeared into the night. That was just the way her mother did things, soft words that were never honest. Mother would kiss her on the forehead, then get up and walk away, dressed as the maidservant who had come to bring her soup, or as Katara who had come to change her bandages.

Sometimes the noise was from the people she's met on her travels. They had loved her one moment and the next had thrown her away. There had been a lot of noise that day they changed their minds. It had not been a quiet fight.

She was going to kill Zuko. She had wanted to kill him before, but not like this. She should not have to beg for the right just to leave her own bedroom. Zuko spoke to her as if this was some how her fault, or some unchangeable force of nature, instead of what it was, a decision he had made. She would watch his body get torn to shreds in front of her. She would hear him scream.

But what she really wanted was to get out of here. As the servants finished their work and she was left alone in the dark, she started to plan. Getting out of the restraints would be the biggest challenge, but she'd find away some how. The bars on the windows were not too close together. She could slip through if she squeezed perhaps. If that was the plan, she would have to act very soon, because in a few weeks it would not be possible. Or she could weld them open. She could use her blanket to make a rope and climb down. Escaping the grounds without the guards noticing would be another challenge, but not a difficult one.

She would make it through the city, down the main road on foot, and would make it to the ocean front. From there she would find a boat to take her back to Ba Sing Se. And then she make her way through Lower Ring to the flat where the group of them had crammed together, hiding from the mobs.

She could still remember how to get there, how one had to short cut across the dirtiest streets in the world, and squeeze through some of the tightest corners. When one knocked on the door, a password was required to get in. Surely they had changed the password since she had been gone, but they would recognize her. They would let her in.

And then she would go inside the dark single room they all shared. She would smell the odor of the fire place and the rot coming from the floorboards the landlord should have replaced years ago. She would be greeted by familiar faces, each of whom had a function to perform in earning an income, maintaining the household, keeping themselves alive there in the margins of society. They'd ask her if she had brought anything back, which was a stupid question because of course she did. She wasn't incompetent, that was her function.

That had been a very specific feeling, returning to the flat every evening. It wasn't the same pleasure that came with being feared and respected in the usual sense, but she didn't mind it. She wanted to go back to it all the same. Though she never actually told them who she was, they knew her better than anyone else ever had. At least he knew her, on a very real level she had never understood, but could appreciate all the same. That was confirmed every time he touched her.

She would have to go back, as soon as she figured out how to get out of this room.

Lucidity. That was the best term for that feeling. Maybe it was more complicated than that. Whatever it was called, she wanted it back more than she wanted to her freedom or to see her brother suffer, more than anything.

"It's not even there anymore," she heard herself say. "The flat. It's completely gone."

"Don't be stupid. It was there that whole time. It's not going anywhere and neither is he," she answered.

There was a pause. The room became completely dark as the sun finally finished setting. She flexed her wrists uncomfortably in her restraints.

"It's not there anymore," she said. "You don't remember do you?"


	6. Chapter 6

Due to the restrains, Azula could no longer put up a fight when Katara came to change her bandages. It was like being burned all over again each time the gauze, soaked and dried with all types of blood and stinking fluids, were pulled from the delicate new skin, Katara didn't back down. She was gentle as she could be, but she didn't back down.

"If you think this is bad, I'm warning you now, childbirth will be worse," Katara said to her patient.

"You've been through neither," Azula said, gritting her teeth. "So keep your mouth shut!"

"And I guess I don't know what you have to deal with in your own head either," Katara said.

Azula felt a rush of anger run through her. The audacity of this peasant! Of course she didn't know what it was like, which was why she had no right to bring it up! "I should kill you for saying that! And I will when I get out of these," she said, straining against the straps on her arms.

"Which is why we can't let you out." Katara took a little water on her hands and subjected the burns to one more painful round of healing. "Hopefully the healing should work better, now that the infection is clearing up," she said. She wrapped a clean layer of gauze around Azula's hands. Then she took a bottle from her bag, uncorked it. "I went to the market yesterday and found this. It should help with the pain."

"I don't want it," Azula said, even though her hands were still throbbing and her eyes were watering.

Katara shrugged. "Okay," she said. She put the bottle away, washed her hands and left.

Zuko by the doorway. "You think now's a good time to bring it up?" he asked Katara.

"You could wait till she's calm, but then you might be waiting for a very long time," Katara said. "Good luck." She patted Zuko on the arm as she headed out into the hallway.

Azula's face was set in stone, indignant, furious. She greatly resented that he saw her tied up, but she also relished the chance to make him watch her suffer. He could see this in her the way she glared at him.

Zuko had mixed feelings as well. There was a small thrill seeing her contained, like she had finally received what she deserved after all the horrible things she had done. She had done a lot. Every time he lifted himself out of bed in the morning, the muscles in his chest ached from when she had struck him with lightning three years before. It wasn't a lot of pain, but was there, and he hadn't deserved it. Part of him wanted to kill her right now. Perhaps he would have, if it weren't for the child. She no longer would be a threat to anyone if he did. And frankly, doing it would feel really good. She had put him through so much trouble.

But he could also see her pain, not just see it, but feel it in his own gut. She was a shell of of the strong confident person she once was, and she was miserable. There was no getting around the great tragedy behind that fact As much as he wanted to scrape her off the face of the earth like a mosquito, he also wanted to untie her, find her another blanket, and comfort her. It was this second set of feelings that he needed to tell her about. It would be nearly impossible to convince her this second set of feelings were real. But he had to try.

"Remember when we were little," he said, "and you and me would play in the hallways hiding behind the tapestries and—"

"Stop it," she said. "You're trying to use some nostalgia I don't feel to manipulate me into agreeing with whatever it is you're about to say. Maybe I can't run away or fight back, but I still won't listen to it."

He took a deep breath. "Fine. I thought I'd let you know... I've given some thought to your requests."

She snorted. "And I suppose there's a catch."

"The catch is that you're not well, Azula. You know that. You haven't been well in a long time."

"You have no idea how I've been doing. We haven't spoken in more than two years."

"You threatened to kill Katara and me just for changing your bandages. We couldn't have a normal conversation about your future without you actually _trying_ to kill me. You're not well."

"You just keep saying that because you enjoy seeing me locked up, but don't have the nerve to throw me into a real prison with Father. You want me to believe I'm some sort of imbecile, and that I should just accept all the various ways you have me tortured because of it. I threatened to kill you because you deserve it. You don't actually know anything at all that I've been through."

"I know that sometimes your mind plays tricks on you, that you see things that frighten you, that you have no idea how to explain."

"That's what those physicians at that institution told you, isn't it?" she said.

"I can hear you from down the hall," he said. "Even when the door is locked and you're alone you still scream and cry. All night long."

Blood rushed to her face. She strained against the leather bindings. "Then get a pair of ear plugs."

"And I know you haven't been happy in a long time."

"I was," she said.

"When?"

"When I was away, and I didn't have to deal with you!"

He was getting frustrated. "What I'm trying to tell you is... I know you don't have it easy, and I really do want to help you! Why is that so impossible for you to understand! Not everyone is as heartless and unsympathetic as you are!"

"And this is how you show how much you care, having your servants tie me to my own bed?" She snarled. "Too little too late, Zuko. You've never given the slightest effort to help me. You left me in that horrible place for an entire year and you didn't visit me even once. You could have checked in, you could have at least come to _look at me_ through the bars of my room. You didn't even have to speak to me," she said, staring him with narrowed eyes. "But you didn't do anything! You just abandoned me there. Just like Mother abandoned me, and so did my friends. In the end even Father left me behind. And you did too! Just like everyone always does."

"Azula, you know I've only had your best interests at heart." But she was right. He hadn't visited her. He hadn't been strong enough. "I don't like seeing you in pain."

"You didn't like seeing it so you ignored it instead." She sat up as best as she could. "Look at me, Zuko! See me now! _This_ is what they did to me there! They tied me up! And unlike your slightly tolerable water-tribe healer, they didn't check up on me every hour, or hold a bowl for me when I was throwing up, or let me take breaks. They left me like this, for days at a time. By myself. Sometimes they forgot to bring me water too. And that's just the beginning of it. You thought the way Father treated you and Mother was terrible? You are _mistaken_. They treated me worse than an animal there, and you let it happen!"

Zuko sat silently for a moment. "I didn't know about that."

"Because you never bothered to inquire!" she said. A little water was starting to gather at the corner of her eyes, and she blinked to try and hide it. "And here you are, giving me this rehearsed nonsense about how you're my brother and you care about me and you're never going to abandon me, but I won't hear it, because you've never offered me any reason to believe it's true."

"You said it was just the beginning of it," he said. He lowered his voice. "I need you to tell me what else happened there. I need you to tell me how bad it got."

She scoffed. "That's not what you came here to talk about, Zuko! Say your peace and leave!"

"Azula." He leaned forward. "You need to tell me, so that I can make sure it never happens to anyone else again."

"That's exactly what your healer girlfriend told me about my hands. And it was none of her business and this is none of yours."

"But it is!"

"Stop skirting the issue!" she said. "Either tell me what you want or get out of here! I'm already sick of looking at you!"

He took a deep breath, even though he wanted to abandon the topic and press for more information, even though his heart was pounding with horror and guilt. "What I was going to do is offer you a proposal, Azula. You do understand that nothing for you is as easy as it once was. And I understand that you suffer a lot more than you want any of us to know. But the healer and I have a plan that maybe can take some of that away."

"Whatever backwards superstitious herbal remedies she learned in her backwards superstitious village, I have no intention of letting her touch me with them."

"And you'd rather spend the rest of your life locked in a room, plagued day and night by your nightmares?"

"I'd rather die than let her touch me again."

"You'd rather die then ever have a chance to live a normal life again? The stakes are even higher now there's a kid involved."

"It doesn't have to suffer through any of this," she said.

"But you do, and with everything you have to deal with, your visions, you won't be able to make decisions on its behalf, or on your own behalf either."

"The things on my list," she said. She struggled once again to get comfortable and then narrowed her eyes. "You're going to hold them hostage, and you want me to agree to your healer's crazy plan before you'll let me have what's rightfully mine."

He hadn't thought of it that way, and the deal sounded pretty cruel the way she said it. He actually felt a little guilty for not giving in to her requests in the first place. But he couldn't back down. "You agree to whatever treatment Katara thinks will work. And if it works, I promise I won't send you back to the hospital. I'll let you go about the palace without a guard, and I'll let you have full control about what happens to the child."

She scoffed. "I don't have any reason to believe you're the type to keep your word."

He sat up straighter, almost blowing up in her face, to tell her he was nothing like her and that he took things of that nature seriously. He had honor after all, and he didn't care to have it insulted. But he stayed calm. He had the upper hand. "But, even if you don't trust me, your only other option is to stay locked up in this room while every single decision pertaining to your life is made for you."

The look on Azula's face was stiff and contorted with hatred. But it slowly softened. Tears began streaming down her cheeks. She took a moment to consider his words, to consider a life of being held in a room like a pet. "Fine. I suppose you aren't giving me any choice. Let the peasant do whatever she wants to me. I don't have anything to lose."

"I do actually care about you. I'm just trying to do what's in your best interest. I'm glad we could come to some level of understanding."

She gritted her teeth.

There was a few seconds of horrible dead air. Zuko made some attempt at a smile, then he leaned forward and put his hand on his sister's shoulder.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Oh. Uhm..." He pulled back his hand, stood up and cleared his throat. "I'll ask the guards to come and let you out."

She didn't break her glare. He headed for the door.

"Tell them to bring me some lemons," she said just as he was about to leave.

"Some..."

"Lemons," she said, leaning back in bed and closing her eyes. "Yellow, leathery fruits, pretty sour, rich in nutrients. Don't imagine you'd know what those are. You only ate them all the time growing up. But sometimes pregnant women have cravings."

"Okay," he said. "If that's what you want I'll let them know." He left her in the room alone, locking the door behind him even though it wasn't really necessary. She had agreed to let Katara help her. Katara would tell him not to get his hopes up. But it was more hope he'd had for a while. He went to find his friends and tell them the good news.


	7. Chapter 7

Azula had not been able to sleep last night, even though she didn't have to deal with the restraints anymore. Without the curtains on her windows light from lanterns on the grounds and the full moon kept her up.

"You have no idea what she's planning," she said as her heart pounded. "No idea what she's planning, and you just agreed!"

"I had no other choice!" she answered.

"Well. You do." She grabbed the bars at the window, looking out at the palace gardens below. All she had to do was weld them open and slip out. It wouldn't be difficult at all. She stared at the window a long time, the moonlight illuminating the world outside and her hands as she gripped the bars.

"Then why don't you!" she shouted.

She turned and kicked the wall with the ball of her foot. She couldn't harm the stone, or even make a noise. She just hurt her foot. She sunk to the floor. "Than why don't you!"

Then she felt a horrible churning in her stomach, like a pot of rice about to boil over. She ran over to her chamber pot and threw up in it. A lot of food to waste. Father had warned her several times that even royalty had to avoid waste at all cost. The had to manage the coffers of an entire nation after all. Here she was locked up in her own bedroom serving no purpose on the court, so even his advice was going to waste. When the food was gone, she just kept coughing until all the bile she had came up too.

That's why she hadn't left yet, for the same reason she was throwing up. She put one of her bandaged hands on her stomach. She could take care of just herself, or at least survive, but she wasn't by herself anymore. If the flat was still there it would have been different.

She watched the moon set and sun rise, wondering if she could at least try, get out through the window or stay and put her trust in people who didn't deserve her trust, not that anyone deserved her trust.

Katara opened the door to find Azula still debating aloud to herself the next morning, sitting in the corner with the chamber pot between her knees.

"Morning sickness is normal," Katara said. "Once the pregnancy progresses a little further it won't be as bad, so don't worry."

Azula looked up and brushed hair out of her face. "Yes. I know what morning sickness is."

"I could give you a time-line for when you can expect it to fade, but you haven't told me how far along you are."

"Is that information necessary for whatever I agreed to let you do to me?"

"No, but I should know because I am your healer."

The sound of Katara's upbeat, disgustingly professional voice grated on Azula's ears a sleepless night. But she was too tired to get up and try to kill her. Of course if she killed her, that would leave no other choice but escaping and Azula had already decided against that.

"If I told you," Azula told Katara, "you'd start doing all types of silly calculations to try and figure out when I last was with _him_ and all other invasions of my privacy."

"Him. The father."

"No, water-bender, I'm referring to my green grocer."

Katara sighed as she unpacked her bag of medicines. "And knowing when you were last with him is the first step to physically tracking him down."

Azula stumbled to her feet and returned to the bed. "He's not around anymore. He's not going to be involved in any of this, and I don't want my brother and his little crew trying to dig up my past."

"Was he unkind to you?" Katara said.

"Chivilrous and sweet like in the old poetry? No. Loyal and selfless and worthy of my respect? Till the very end."

"What happened between you two?"

"It ended. Now whatever it is you're going to do, please get it over with, I have a long day of nothing planned, and your voice is getting on my nerves."

"I'm sorry. I understand that those sort of things are not easy to talk about." Another, disgustingly cheerful, professional response. Katara took a plain vial from her supplies and added a couple drops to a bucket of water she'd brought with her. "Please tie back your hair and lie down. This won't take long."

"You're not going to tell me what you're going to do?"

"When Aang, well... when you killed him..." Katara coughed, then took a deep breath. Whatever emotions she was feeling, to Azula's annoyance, she had decided not to let them get in the way of her job. "I brought him back using water from the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole. When your brother asked me to manage your care I did a little reading on different techniques Water-Tribe healers had done on mental patients. There's been mixed degrees of success, but no one's tried using spirit water."

"Well what a twist of fate, using the same substance to heal me you used to save someone I killed. No sense of loyalty at all?"

Katara set the bucket at the side of the bed. Her jaw muscles twitched just the slightest. Azula made a mental note that she had found Katara's button to push in case she ever needed.

"I'm a healer," Katara said. "It's my trade. I treat all types of people all the time, and the way I feel about people personally has no effect on how well I do my job. You're not special." She took a deep breath. "And you're not beyond redemption either."

That would be Azula's next game, she decided, testing the peasant healer's loyalty to her job. It really was amusing how poorly she pretended she'd let go of the past.

Azula brushed her hair away from her forehead and lay down on the bed. Katara bended the water out of the bucket and laid her hands on her patient's temples.

"I'm not sure I feel comfortable letting you literally brainwash me," Azula said. "How do I know I'll even be the same person when you're done?"

"This isn't going to change who you are, it will just remove all the things... distracting you from being who you really are."

"You don't particularly care for who I am, though."

"It will undo whatever tipped you over the edge during the comet. It may even go back further, undo all those years of corruption at the hands of your father."

"By corruption you mean training?"

"We could argue about this all you want Azula!" Katara said, finally losing patience. "But you did make a deal. Now will you please just sit still and be quiet!"

The water around her head started to warm up. The process began. It got warmer and warmer, until it burned as badly as it did when Katara used the water on her hands, pulsing through her skull and down her spine. Azula shot up. "You've tricked me into this!"

"I'm sorry if it hurts. Even if it's painful, it's not going to harm you. Sit still!"

Azula lay back down. The burning sensation began again. She grabbed at the sheets, clenching them in her fists with her aching hands. A small cry came from her throat, despite her trying to stop it. And then just when the burn became unbearable her vision went black and she saw something else entirely.

Her mother was standing over her trying to explain why setting a tapestry on fire was not allowed. She looked so angry, her face dark and exhausted. She had been gone just a few days later. Azula saw the orderlies from the hospital forcing her into the straight jacket as she kicked and screamed and sobbed, and and how they dragged her out of her own bedroom. Zuko had been outside in the hallway, watching this happen. He hadn't even warned her they were coming to take her away. She saw herself being tied to the bed in the hospital, two huge male nurses forcing her limbs into the restraints, being too jaded and thirsty to do anything about it. She saw the forrest near her mother's house, where she had ran, tears obscuring her vision. And then she saw the filthy streets of Ba Sing Se, which smelled of rotten food and waste. But as soon as she saw those streets, she exhaled. She was safe here.

The pain stopped instantly at this point. She was once again in the flat with the others who didn't know her real name, sharing a meal with them. Those familiar faces made her feel so safe. She had laughed with them, till her sides and her stomach hurt. And then the meal ended, and she could feel his hands on her hips and his kisses on her forehead. Why hadn't she stayed there?

And then she remembered the moment her lucidity had left her. She remembered the tightness and panic and rage in her own chest, such that she could hardly catch her own breath, while her own fire shot from her own hands, and how she hadn't been able to turn it off, and hadn't wanted to-even though it was turning on her. She felt her hands burning once again, the skin charring all the way up to her wrists.

"Stop!" She cried, tears streaming down her face. "Get your hands out of my head!"

Katara let go, and returned the water to its container.

"That wasn't supposed to happen!" Azula said. "You made me see terrible things! I was trying to forget and you cruelly brought them back!"

"Actually," Katara said, "Thats... well it's the first step. You actually did really well. The books tell me that's what I should expect from a healing session like this. Azula, it forces you to confront your fears and traumas. You can't run from them if you want to get better. I didn't realize your memories were that bad."

"You didn't care to ask."

Katara dried her hands on a towel. "It was your hands wasn't it?"

Azula sat up and covered her eyes with her elbow, deciding not to answer.

"Do you want something for the pain?"

"No," she answered after a slight pause, though the thought of dulling her mind to get it off her memories was very much appealing.

"We're not done," Katara said. "I have to come back and do it again tomorrow. It may get worse next time, but it will start to lessen as you improve."

"You most certainly will not come back." Azula leaned back on the bed, pulling her elbow up to cover her eyes.

Katara raised her eyebrows. "Tell me how you feel tomorrow morning. You may be surprised. And you may change your mind."

"I won't. Get out."

Katara returned her things to her bag. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Azula wiped her nose, which was starting to run. Then she threw up again. The memory of the pain from her hands was fresh once again in her mind. She was shaking a little.

But then she remembered the moments of lucidity that had come before that, remembered how much she regretted the fact the flat and the home she'd had were no longer there. She realized she would trade the world to feel that again.

Katara received a knock on her door at dawn the next morning. She rubbed her eyes and stumbled out of bed in her night dress to open the door.

One of the Kyoshi warrior guards was standing there. She gave her a Katara a nervous smile. "Sorry to disturb you, but-"

"Don't apologize. It's her duty to tend to my needs," Azula was standing between another pair of guards behind the first. They held onto her tightly by her arms. Katara knew whatever Azula wanted was important to her if she was willing to suffer the humiliation of being man-handled just for the right to leave her room and ask for it. Azula had already dressed herself, despite the fact that the sun had barely risen. She had fixed her hair and her makeup to their old standard of perfection.

"It's not my _duty_ , I volunteered," Katara said.

Azula came into the room without asking Katara's permission. The guards followed. Azula sat down on the bed, straightened her back and crossed her legs.

"I need to inform you," she told Katara, "I woke up feeling well this morning."

"No morning sickness?"

"Heavens no. I lost all of my dinner from the night before, and my head is still throbbing. My _body_ wishes it was dead right now. I'm referring to my nightmares. I didn't have any last night."

"Which is unusual for you," Katara said, throwing a robe over her night dress, not sure she could comprehend what her patient was saying this early in the morning.

"All evening yesterday, I felt surprisingly... clear. Whatever you did to me, you will repeat it. I've changed my mind."

Katara smiled. "Good to know it worked."

"I expect you in my room at noon sharp. Is that understood?"

"If that's a time that... fits into your schedule."

"Don't get smart." She scowled at Katara's night dress, baggy eyes, and disheveled hair. "Do they really allow you to sleep this _late_ in the Water Tribe?

"The Midnight Sun messes around with our sleep cycles," Katara said, with a hint of sarcasm that would have made her brother proud.

Azula huffed. "No wonder your culture is so backwards."

Azula nodded at the guards. They took her by her arms and led her into the hall back toward her room.

"Noon then," Katara said. She hadn't actually thought it would work, but apparently it had.


	8. Chapter 8

As Katara predicted the next treatment was even more painful than the last. The memories it brought up were even more horrible. But Azula slept even more soundly than she had the night before. She without hesitation allowed Katara to continue the treatments every afternoon.

The pain grew more intense with each session for the first fortnight, but after that, started to lessen. However the rewards did not. Finally, for the first time in months, Azula could go through her day without seeing any of her visions. Her old triggers, the mirror, certain land marks around the house which brought up unpleasant memories, long nights she spent alone, finally had no effect on her. After a few weeks Katara felt confident it was safe for Azula to walk around the palace without the guards.

"You have to be careful," Aang had told Katara. "I mean... We still don't know which part of her is evil and which part is just sick."

"It was part of the deal," Katara said. "We have to let her leave her room eventually."

Azula didn't waste time making herself at home again in the palace. She went out to the gardens frequently for walks, and made use of the courtyard to practice her fire-bending forms religiously each morning. She started joining her brother for meals, and though the conversation was stiff and shallow small talk, it cordial, and it was normal. It had been a very long time since anything in Azula's life had been normal.

The real test of the healing regiment was when Katara took the bandages off once and for all. The new skin had completely formed. For the first time, Azula could see what the damage actually was, what she was stuck with for the rest of her life. Her hands used to be elegant and feminine, though deadly. Now they looked pink and wrinkled diseased, as if they had aged a hundred years.

"No more bandages!" Katara said, as if this was a good thing. "You're free to use your hands as you please!"

"They'll never look normal again," Azula said.

"You're not the only one around here with scars. There's no need to be ashamed for something someone else did to you."

Azula pulled her sleeves down over her wrists. "I want a pair of gloves."

"No one will judge you for them," Katara said, with a kind smile.

"Stop it!" Azula said. "Stop with this awful obsessive... kindness. It's not logical, and not wanted. You've made it clear it's an act, some professional healer's face you put on because it's your job, and I won't have it. I want the gloves!"

Katara was taken aback. It took her a moment to find her words. But she finally nodded. "I'll see what I can find."

Azula looked at her hands one more time before pulling them into her sleeves completely. The pain of seeing her scarred hands would not something she'd be able to handle in her worst state. But she was stronger now. She didn't like looking at them, but she could at least handle it. The gloves would ease the pain and she would move on. However realizing this didn't make her feel any better.

The dry season became the wet season. Farmers welcomed the change of pace with gladness. The oppressive Fire Nation heat finally dissipated, and for the couple hours a day when it wasn't pouring buckets, it was actually pleasant to go outside.

Katara felt comfortable decreasing Azula's treatments from everyday to a few times a week, and then to once a week. But still Azula continued to have fewer and fewer nightmares and visions. She wasn't sleeping any better. That was a symptom of pregnancy. But physical discomfort was infinitely easier to deal with than the mental discomfort she'd been dealing with before.

Zuko found Azula sitting in the drawing room one afternoon. The room was well lit and out of the way of most of the commotion of the palace. She had taken a liking to the room in recent weeks, asking the servants to deliver tea and fruit to the room while she read and wrote. He walked in on her while she was kneeling before a desk, working on a letter. The letters had been Katara's suggestion, in hopes that writing them would give Azula more practice reaching out to others and thus aid in her recovery. Azula had been writing many letters lately.

"Don't you have something dreadfully dull and important you could be doing, Fire Lord?" Azula said to him as he entered. "Hassling one of your advisers? Planning the next several months of not warring?"

Zuko picked up a lemon from the fruit basket on the table and examined it. "I've come to let you know Aang is going to return from a trip to the Northern Water Tribe, either tonight or tomorrow."

"That's one of your friends isn't it? Is Aang the blind one?" she said.

"No, Aang's the Avatar. The one who's been having dinner with us while his girlfriend is treating you. You were mercilessly teasing him about the fact he's a vegetarian last night."

"I thought that girl was your girlfriend?"

"Why would... no! That doesn't matter. It was a diplomatic trip, and he's coming back tonight."

"I forgot how much his extinct race believed in things like talk and time wasting. It really is a shame we aren't alive for a Fire Nation Avatar."

Zuko should have expected that type of commentary. "All of this healing you've gone through, and Katara hasn't been able to erase any of your father's influence."

"She sticks her fingers in my brain so I can think clearly, not to change one distortion for another. And he's your father too. It's quite amusing how much you enjoy forgetting that." Azula used her gloved hand to dip her brush in the inkwell again.

Zuko tried reading over her shoulder, but didn't want to lean over too much. He didn't want her to notice. He couldn't make it out. "I'm just wondering if I should be worried having you in the Palace, as much as you take after him," he said, trying to pass it off as a joke, even adding a small laugh.

"And all those physicians told me _I_ was insane," Azula said. "You can hate the man all you want, but you'll never get over how much of him you were stuck with. Have you looked in the mirror lately?"

"Why are we talking about this?"

"If there's anything I've learned over the past through months from allowing your girlfriend to stick her fingers in my brain, it's the importance of self awareness. You can't deny where you come from even if you don't like it. Your height, build, voice, your face—the good half—is Father's. Your dreadful insomnia. That odd habit you have of folding papers several times and rolling them up, especially when you don't care for what they they read."

"I don't do that!"

"You make copies of your most important documents to hide the fact that you do. And so did he. I'm much better at reading people than you are, making observations. It's why I got along better with him than you did."

"You two didn't get along. He just thought you were slightly less a waste of his time than I was."

"I played the game, that's all. And soon enough I went from being the better investment to being the only investment."

Azula's tone was matter of fact and calm. It really bothered Zuko how much she could talk about their childhood as if it had happened to someone else, as if it didn't affect her now.

"And I suppose the two of you just had a field day after I was banished. I know it was his plan all along, and you couldn't have been happier to see me go."

"For a while it was like that," she said. Azula shrugged. She signed the note and fanned it to encourage the ink to dry. After a moment her tone shifted. "But when you were gone it was different."

"Because you didn't have anyone around to speak up when the two of you were planning your reign of terror?"

"Because with you _and_ mother gone, well... he had to angry at someone, I suppose."

Azula got to her feet and shook out her hands to undo the cramps that came from writing all day. She still hadn't told anyone how long she expected the baby to arrive, but she was just starting to show. It was visible when she was standing. Maybe that's why she was interested in having a conversation about Father in the first place, she was thinking about what it would mean being a parent herself. She sat next to him on the cushions surrounding the center table, and selected one of the fruit from the basket and friend. "I was very much hoping Yuko would bring oranges today. Instead we have mango. But she remembered the lemons so I suppose she's useful enough to keep."

"What was that like? When... I was gone?"

"Unpleasant," she said.

"I can't imagine what was going through his head, how someone could treat a child like that, either you or me. How someone could treat his wife the way he did. I've tried to understand it and I can't."

"Really, Zuko? You really can't understand?" she said. "Always being angry, but never admitting precisely at whom, because you know you won't like the answer?" she said. "Probably having something to do with poor relations with your own father? I don't suppose you'd know what that's like at all." Azula took out a knife and got to work on the mango. "People aren't really mysterious," she said. "Except perhaps me."

"I'm sorry you had to deal with that."

"Don't you dare offer me your sympathy for that," she said. "Compared to that awful hospital of yours, our father was a joke."

He had never stopped to think that maybe their father had been cruel to her as well. He hadn't payed much attention to them. He wasn't the observer that she was. She probably hadn't been mistreated the exact same way he was, which is why he hadn't really seen it. Perhaps it had been more emotional, or more neglectful. But to her the hospital had been worse, and it stung to hear that. Zuko realized that he was the real villain in his sister's mind. That was a lot to process. How could she sit there, speaking to him so normally?

But whatever had happened at home when they were children, or whatever had happened at the hospital, Zuko was going insane wondering how it compared to what had happened while she had been away. Wondering how she had gotten those scars she now kept so carefully concealed with silk gloves.

He coughed. "Well, I just wanted to tell you he's arriving tonight or tomorrow," Zuko said. "In case you wanted to join Katara and I when we greet him. Just putting that out there." He got up to leave.

"I probably won't," she said. "Don't bother me again until supper's ready."

"Okay," he said. He left her in the sun room.

He should have returned to his office to try and get some work done, but he stuck around the hallway instead. He took up residence several yards down the the corridor from the sun room to wait. Her maid-servant was waiting outside as well, by the door. He briefly made eye contact with the young woman once while he passed the time.

Azula called her maid servant into the room. The servant emerged with the letter, folded in her hand, ready to be mailed. Zuko stopped her.

"Yuko," he said, "You need to head down to the kitchen and tell the chef to start supper preparations later than usual. Our guest isn't due to till arrive till later tonight."

The maid-servant bowed. "And am I to finish mailing this letter first?" she said.

"I'll do it," he said. He held out his hand and she gave him the letter.

"As usual?" she said.

"As usual."

"Perhaps, if you wish, sir, I could hand you the next one without waiting for you to stop me." The young woman bowed and headed off toward the kitchen.

Zuko checked to make sure no one else was watching, then slipped the letter into his sleeve.


	9. Chapter 9

Azula chose not to join Zuko and Katara when they went to greet Aang, choosing to go to bed early instead to rest.

Though Aang was soaking wet from riding in through the seasonal rain, Katara ran up to hug him anyway.

"It went really well!" he told her. "I think the chief is going to pull the ships out of the Western Sea."

"Oh, thank Heaven!" Katara said. "The last thing we need is another war."

They kissed.

"How's your patient?" Aang said.

"You wouldn't believe it!" Katara said. "She's almost back to her old self. I mean, I'm not sure that's a good thing or not, but..."

"It's better," Aang said. "People have a right to be themselves. I knew if anyone could help her it was you!"

Katara smiled. "I knew I could too."

"Yeah, about that." Zuko stepped forward. "I have to show you two something."

Katara and Aang looked at each other and followed. The three of them headed through the dark halls, past the grand echoing space of the throne to the contrastingly small office coming off of it. Zuko lit a gas lamp sitting on the desk and then closed the door. He looked shifty and anxious as he turned to a drawer in his desk.

"Zuko, how to do run a nation with this much clutter?" Katara said.

"It's not clutter," he said, opening the drawer and shuffling past brushes and ink bottles to get to what he was looking for. "I just... like keeping my things out where I can see them. So I know what's going on. Makes me feel more in control." Zuko found what he wanted, a small piece of parchment, folded and wrinkled and rolled like most of his parchments.

"But you hide that one paper?" Aang said.

"Azula has been here for almost three months," Zuko began. "She's just beginning to recover. This means that fairly soon we're going to have the answer to a very important question. What part of her is evil and which part is just insane."

"I wouldn't call her close," Katara said. "She still has a long way to go, and she's still in somewhat a delicate state."

"Well do you have an estimate?" Zuko said.

Katara looked uncomfortable. "I hate to put a time limit on something so... complicated."

"Either way," Zuko said, "we have to try to figure out which one is which. And to do that we need information. What she was doing when she was gone, what she plans to do now. Perhaps she was in contact with someone in Ba Sing Se who she's still in contact with now. Or perhaps she wants to continue work she was doing while away. Either way. Her past is key, to our helping her recovery, and knowing whether or not we can trust her."

"It may help her recovery to focus on the future instead," Katara said.

"You forget how dangerous she is. We can't leave any stone unturned," Zuko said. "Don't let you're mission to improve her health trick you into thinking you're her ally."

"You don't have to remind me of anything," Katara said. "Has she told you anything about her exile? You've been eating meals with her, maybe she's let something slip."

"Almost never, but when she does it's not enough to put any type of narrative together in my head."

"Have you tried asking her?" Aang said.

Zuko scowled at him. "I've tried. She always manages to dodge my questions. She's too intelligent to let me get far, and I could press her, but I know better than to pick a fight with her when there are simpler ways of acquiring information."

"Just tell her what you told us. We need to know if we can help her and if we can trust her," Aang said.

"That still sounds like a fight. I meant simpler than that," Zuko held up the crumpled parchment in his hand. A small prideful smirk slid onto his face. Then he handed the paper to Aang.

"What is that?" Katara said as Aang struggled to unfold it.

Aang's face became sober. He looked at Katara and folded the paper up again, as if it had contained very grave news, or something extremely filthy. "It's one of her letters."

"I need your help," Zuko said. "I've been pouring over them. Not a clue. It's driving me insane and I was hoping the two of you could find something I missed."

Zuko received silence as a reply.

He leaned forward over his desk, looking his friends in the eye. "You two do understand how vitally important this is?"

There was more silence.

"We do," Katara said, in a hushed tone. "But what you don't understand is... how... I actually and pretty shocked you would do such a thing."

"Why!" Zuko said. "What such a thing? Protecting my country and claim to the throne from my biggest potential threat? Helping my sister recover from the illness that's plagued her for three years? Frankly that last one shocks me too."

"It's..." Katara stood up and straightened her dress. She struggled to find her words. "Problematic."

Aang nodded in agreement. "We can't help you with this."

Zuko's face contorted, half confused, half angry. "You've been helping me so far!"

"We haven't helped you do anything dishonest," Aang said.

"This isn't dishonest. I'm not lying to her. I'm not stealing from her. I'm collecting information, in a way that's the opposite of dishonesty."

"Your stealing privacy." Katara said. "If she found out you were doing this—"

"She won't find out!"

Katara continued. "If she found out you were doing this, it would destroy all the trust she's learned over the past few months. And that was the biggest obstacle for her. Trusting people. It will will send her back to the beginning, and I don't know if she'll ever be able to recover after that."

"But she doesn't have to find out!" Zuko was actually surprised not to have his friend's support. "Look! I've been sleepless for nights on end, worrying about her. Both what's she's been through, and what she might do. And mostly I've been worrying about how much of either of those two it is. I have no other choice. This is our only hope, besides taking a ship to Ba Sing Se myself and hunting down the father of her child. Which I can't do at this time, because of work here at home." Zuko sat down. "I thought you two would understand!" He laid his head in his hands. "Because these letters... I need them to solve this puzzle, but they just frighten me and perplex me to no end."

"Zuko," Aang said, trying to be sensitive. "You know that this is a little bit... shady right."

"I know that it's necessary."

Katara paused. "I think what Azula needs is time. Not someone spying on her!"

"And in that 'time,' who knows what she'll be able to plan! For the love of Heaven, explain to me how proactively defending ourselves against one of the most dangerous, vile people in the world is not justified?"

"Well..." Aang took a deep breath, still wincing from the word "Vile." "There still has to be a line. Because... at a certain point, if you cross it, there's no point in fighting anymore because you're just as bad as the one your fighting against... If that makes any sense."

"Out f all those bits and tidbits of ideas you bring back from the spirit world, Aang, that by far is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Zuko said. "I'm running out of options when it comes to her. I don't know what else there is to try!"

"Think of it this way," Katara said, her voice cold. Your mother told you the stories of all the things your father did to her. And one of the crueler things he did was attempting to control her, root through her past, by intercepting her letters."

Zuko pounded his fist on the desk. The noise echoed through the little office and left a long moment of silence in it's wake. Zuko took the letter, shoved it back into Aang's hand. "Who do you think all these letters are for! You... spectacular idiots! You could have read the headers. She's been sending a good portion to the prison. Some elsewhere, to old friends and relatives, but a good portion of them are going to him. That apparently is where her true loyalties lie, though I can't possibly understand why!"

Aang looked at the letter again. He gave it to Katara who glanced it over herself.

"Perhaps you could actually read the header before you jumped to a conclusion about what a horrible person I am, and why I have no cause to fear her or want to protect her, still not sure which. Maybe you should look before you judge!"

Katara clenched her jaw.

Zuko took a deep breath. It would be a long time before he could work his way down from his hysterical state. Finally he lowered his voice and closed his eyes. "And don't..." he said. "And whatever you do... do NOT EVER compare me to him! You have no idea how hard I work trying... not... to be that. _That_ was control, and trying to gain power over my mother, and trying promote some... agenda. I'm trying to protect Azula, and protect everything I care about. And they are _not_ the same." Zuko took the letter back from Katara. "Besides he said. The cruelest thing he did was not reading her mail, for the love of Heaven. It was taking her children away! He practically ripped us from her arms." He tried to smooth out the creases and folds he had left in it, though he was not very successful.

Katara and Aang watched him do this. The office was very quiet for a long time.

"This... has to be difficult for you," Aang said.

"Astute observation!" Zuko said. "Why don't you stop giving me your sympathy, or your judgment for that matter, and do what I brought you here to do. Give me an idea!"

Katara paused. "I don't think this is the advice you want to here. But I think you should mail it. And I think you should stop reading her letters."

Zuko looked up. "Are you insane?"

"You said you wanted our advice. Mail the letter. And don't read any more. Not unless you think she's doing something suspicious first. In other words, be an adult and do the honest thing!" Katara leaned forward. "You're beginning to worry me, Zuko. I should have become suspicious when you lost her temper with her while we were changing her bandages. I'm going to be watching for a pattern! And I fear it's already developing."

"I can't do that!" Zuko said.

"Why not?" Aang said. "I'm going to agree with Katara. Just mail it to the prison. You don't need to allow any replies coming out."

"She shouldn't be writing them in the first place! She shouldn't be showing loyalty to him. It's not like he treated her any better than he did me. She told me this afternoon, and yet... I don't understand it at all. Either these letters will destroy her, putting her in some... mindset or cycle or... Or they're going to destroy me because there's a 1 in a thousand chance they're not planning something."

"Protect and control can seem pretty similar to the ones who you're doing it to," Aang said.

"Fine!" Zuko said. "Maybe they are the same thing, but that doesn't mean it's not necessary."

"What's necessary is that you think of your sister before yourself!" Katara said, finally raising her voice. "And that you... check yourself!"

"What do you want me to do, just stick it in some messenger's hand like it's a grocery list?" Zuko said.

"That letter was a few sentences about the weather," Aang said, his voice quiet, not wanting to add to the conflict, "which isn't much different from a grocery list."

"Today it's the weather, tomorrow it's an in-depth description of every member of the royal court and their loyalties."

Katara took his hand. "But today it's the weather, and you're beginning to worry me."

Zuko glared at her. He curled his hands into fists. "I'll do it for you two. Not for her. She'll have this place burned to the ground if we give her even an inch." He took the letter, and flipped it face down. He pulled a brush and ink bottle from the dark recesses of his drawer and hastily wrote a message of his own. _Stay away from her. -Zuko._ Perhaps it was a little pointless, ordering someone locked away in a cell with no way to communicate with the outside to "Stat away." However it made him feel better. He looked at his own scratchy handwriting for a moment. Then decided a touch of drama was worth the effort. He stamped the back with the royal seal.

He picked up the letter and waved it around so the ink would dry faster, not having the patience to let it dry naturally. Then he folded, stuffed it into his coat and stood up to go find a messenger.

Aang and Katara followed him as he walked through the dark halls, his steps fast and far apart.

"I've poured over these letters day and night, and they still tell me nothing. I even hired someone who specializes in cracking codes. She couldn't figure it out either."

"You hired a code breaker to read your sister's mail?" Aang said.

Zuko huffed. "Nothing at all." Then he sighed. "I just hoped they would offer a clue. I just hoped they would give me some insight into what happened to her out there, since she left, since I abandoned her. You don't have to remind me that she's been through a lot. I at least hoped they would tell me what on earth is going on in her sad, strange head. But nothing. I can't figure it out. I can't help her, and I can't protect myself from her. She's written to all types of people really, but never to anyone the both of us don't know. None of them mention Ba Sing Se, or her hands, or the child, or even the healing sessions. They're all filled with the same..."

"She's no poet, from what I've read of it," Aang said. "'I'm doing well, how are you? It's been raining for three days.'"

"This predicament of yours is partly my fault, I suppose," Katara said. "I told her to write the letters. I didn't tell her to whom. I just thought it would be good for her to... reach out. And I suppose this is her best effort. It's somewhat sad."

"Somewhat?" Aang said.

"Stop... romanticizing her like that," Zuko said. "She's not some poor sick turtle duckling you're nursing back to health. She's dangerous, even when her mind is broken. Even though she's frankly getting a little fat. She's dangerous. And she doesn't deserve the respect you think I should give her."

Katara raised her eyebrows. "But a little respect can go a long way."


	10. Chapter 10

Nine:

Azula slowly moved through the forms she had been practicing since she had first started fire-bending training as a small child. She started with the simple ones and, shifting her weight from one foot to the next as her hands switched places in front of her. She timed her breaths, in and out with the movements. And then she progressed onto the more complicated ones.

"You don't have to stare, Zuko," she said. "It's nothing you don't do in practice yourself."

Rainy season was almost over, and it was the first day they could practice outside. There was even a little sun out this morning.

"I don't do them like that," he said as he approached. He had not expected to see her out on the field, he had expected the weight she had gained would throw off her balance, but she was tallented enough to adjust. He always forgot how good she actually was. "I suppose you should be practicing slowly in your condition. I can especially see why you're doing them without any actual fire."

She gave him a condescending glare. "You don't go through your forms slowly in the morning?"

"I learned them slowly, and without fire. But there's no reason to keep practicing them like that after you've mastered them."

She rolled her eyes. "I always wondered why I was better than you. Now I know. Besides. This was the only way I could practice in Ba Sing Se. It's dangerous in the Earth Kingdom for known fire-benders. The war is far from over in the minds of most."

"You were practicing in that alley that whole time?" Zuko said.

"I practiced many places. First of all, Zuko. Come here. Second, tie back your hair to get it out of your face."

"What?"

"Come _here_."

He went over to where she was standing. She made him stand in front of her. Then she walked around him and jabbed him in the shoulders to make him stand up straighter.

"It sickens me how long you've obviously been practicing alone, without instruction. I can tell by your posture alone. An insult to the art. Widen your stance!" She stood in front of him. "We'll go through the forms in order. One at a time. I can't teach you how to be a non-mediocre fire-bender but I can teach you how to practice. In the mean time hire an instructor. Not even the Fire Lord himself is above receiving a little coaching."

Azula had him mirror her as she went through the simplest of forms, the ones that brought back memories of being a small boy attending his first lessons. She barked out corrections frequently, making him painfully aware of how sloppy he'd become. He remembered watching Azula practice this way with their father when they were children. Zuko had always felt a little jealous of the one-on-one attention he gave her, but of the constant nagging and berating he gave her, he had not been jealous at all.

She sounded a lot like him. Going through the forms with her was uncomfortable on many levels.

"Shouldn't you be resting?" he said to her.

"Straighten your feet!" she answered. "For the child's sake? Your healer is perfectly fine with these exorcizes. And I promise you, brother, _it_ never rests, always squirming around, stretching it's limbs, at all hours. Why should I rest for it?" A tiny smirk appeared on her face and then disappeared. "A sign it will be a powerful fire-bender like its mother and father."

"He was a fire bender?"

"Of course, it could also mean it will grow up to be like you. Impatient, undisciplined, a hopeless insomniac, a headache for his teachers… For the love of! Zuko! Your feet!"

"I guess we'll never know," he said as they started the form from the top.

"For a few years at least, though there will be less uncertainty if I train it myself."

"I thought you were going to give him away. You changed your mind?

"And I'm not allowed to do that?"

"Well..."

"I fail to imagine anyone more capable than myself of training this child to reach it's full potential. If it looks up to me, it will learn all of the possibilities it has for itself, watching what it's mother manages to achieve."

"Achieve what?

"You could use me on the court, Zuko," she said. "I'm skilled at reading people, predicting their actions. You are not much better than a usurper, and your youth alone is reason for the officers and barons to doubt your competence. Even though you have done your best to purge your staff, there are still those who are loyal to Father who would have you killed in your sleep." She sighed. "Of course, killing you myself is tempting, I suppose. But I also am young, and I also would be a usurper. And I also would not be Father. I would have no better luck than you. Your feet! How many times must I tell you!"

Zuko adjusted his footing, his throat going somewhat dry. Of course, the mere fact that Azula had mentioned the idea aloud told him she probably had no intention of carrying it out. It was the things she didn't tell him, like the letters she was writing to their father, that he had reason to fear.

"Or perhaps I would be better suited to a role in the military. I would also be a formidable general," she said. "If you managed to keep my loyalty, you would fear no threat to your throne or this country, as you can imagine."

Zuko imagined a coup.

"Or even just a life of relaxation, the type noble-women of old would lead. Perhaps I can lay claim over the family's old summer home on Ember Island. My point is, I've had plenty of time to think these last several weeks, which has been easier to do now that your healer has made some progress on me. I've begun to realize that I have more options for my future than I had previously imagined."

"What had you imagined before?"

Azula finished the final of the elementary forms. She took a deep breath. "Living in Ba Sing Se, I suppose. Perhaps that would not have been so terrible if everything hadn't changed in the end. I would have preferred living somewhere else, where my child would not grow up as a pariah. To be honest, I hadn't imagined much at all."

She took a deep breath, centered herself, then, with a few quick and elegant movements, generated a bolt of electricity that shot across the practice field and hit a target far off in the distance. The noise echoed off the hills in the distance. Zuko thought he felt his soul leave his body. When Azula shook the smoke off her fingertips, a small smile crept onto her face.

"Something I could not do while in hiding," she said.

"You could have gone into hiding in the Fire Nation where you could have practiced your fire bending all you wanted, and you stayed there," Zuko said. "Something was keeping you there, and I don't think it was an inability to escape. And you haven't told me what it was."

"Guess away," she said. "None of that is relevant now."

"You've brought a lot home with you to tell me it isn't relevant."

"I've brought an embryo. Those are not particularly difficult to come by, if you really think about."

"And scars," Zuko said. "And I want to know if they're from the same person. You just let slip he was a fire bender."

She turned to face him. "Why are you so interested in the very things I don't want to tell you? Why is it so hard for you to accept that I'm here? I'm safe. As far as you know I have no intention of killing you anytime soon, and I've been getting treatment and am more lucid than I have been since..." she trailed off, then paused to put a hand on her stomach. "I should not continue on with the more advanced forms. My back is aching and I have to sit. Nature takes it's course."

"Since when we were young, before I left?" he said.

She glared at him. "It doesn't matter, I'm lucid now, for the most part. I've been better, but it doesn't matter. I'm going back inside." She took a drink of water from the servant girl who was carrying a pitcher for the very purpose, then headed back toward the palace.

Zuko watched her, then curled his hands into fists and ran to catch up. "Listen!" he said. "All these things you want to do, all these 'wonderful things' you're 'imagining for the future,' you'll need my permission. I'm your legal guardian and I have the papers to prove that. Maybe you're getting better, but you're nowhere near ready to be emancipated, even though you are now of age."

"The Fire Lord himself is nothing more than one more government bureaucrat citing red tape it appears."

"And if you want me to trust you, want me to believe you're capable of something other than... destroying everything you touch, I need to know where it is you're coming from. You were gone for two years. I don't know you, Azula! You need to help me out."

Azula spun on her heals, fire escaped from her mouth and her hands as she snapped. "Then why don't you read about it in my letters! You seem to taken great interest in them!" She stepped forward into Zuko's personal space. "Staying up late, burning oil, enraptured in the thrilling plot of my account of last week's weather for Father! Golly, I wonder what it will be next week, rain you suppose? I know you've been intercepting them. I know exactly how long it takes for a messenger hawk to travel to the places I've been sending them, and I can estimate how long it will take for a response to return, even if I know the only reply I'll get is a courtesy note from a prison guard that it was received. I can do calculations in my head and I know how to work an abacus when I can't. And the only explanation I have for the delay is you."

"I'm not reading your letters!"

"Funny. That sounded almost as convincing as your garbage about how you knowing my past is somehow necessary!"

Her volume had gone up. Several of the servants around the nearby garden had paused and turned.

He motioned for her to lower his voice, but he had to admit, that had been a pretty weak lie. "I just want to get to the truth."

Her face turned red. She turned and shot a hot a blast at a eucalyptus tree growing nearby. Thirty feet of foliage suddenly disappeared beneath the flame, and if it hadn't been isolated from the other trees the entire garden might have been destroyed. "Tell the truth yourself before you dare ask it from me!" Then she stormed away, back to her room.

He kept following her. "Azula! Just let me speak to you!"

She didn't turn around for him, but finally he caught up to her in the hallway.

"Just let me talk to you," he said. "I just want to know what happened to you."

"I can't tell you that," she said, refusing to look at him. "And I don't have to explain to you why."

"I know you want your space, but—"

"It's not space that I want," she said. "It's respect I need."

He looked at her for a moment. "Okay," he said. "I understand."

She took a deep breath. "Please promise me," she said, "I have things in my past that I don't want you to know, because I don't want to remember them. I can't face them. It's behind me and I have to move forward. Promise me you'll stop this nonsense detective work."

Zuko put his hands on her shoulder, only to have her brush them away. There was nothing he could do to placate her except give her what she wanted. He knows what she would do if he couldn't?

"Promise me," she said.

"Fine," he said. "I promise. We can leave the past in the past, and I won't do any more digging."

She looked him up and down with a cold glare, almost sure she couldn't trust him. "Good," she said. "I expect you to keep your word, though you have a history of disappointing me." She stormed away as a group of servants ran outside to address the issue of the burning tree.


	11. Chapter 11

Aang was roused in the middle of the night by a knock on the door of his guest bedroom. He rubbed his eyes and leaped off the bed.

"Aang your cat's not going to jump out at me again, is it?" It was Zuko. His speech was a little slurred.

"It's not a cat, it's a lemur, and he went out hunting."

"Out hunting, the one thing you could say to make me feel even less comfortable about that creature," Zuko said.

Aang opened the door. "Why don't you like Momo?" Aang said, personally offended.

"Because it poops and sheds and has claws and tries to touch me. We've been over that," Zuko answered. He leaned in the doorway and rubbed his eyes, which were very dark underneath and very heavy. He looked like he wanted to collapse. Zuko took a deep breath. "I need your help."

"With what?"

"Packing. I mean, unless you wanted to come with me, which I would appreciate."

"Where?"

"Long story," Zuko said. He pushed himself off the doorway and continued rubbing his aching forehead. "Let's go."

They headed down torchlit hallways past the patrolling guards who shot curious side glances at the two of them, but didn't dare inquire. Zuko took Aang up a flight of stares to his chambers and into an off-shooting room with his wardrobe.

"I'd do this myself but I'm just too exhausted to think."

"Do you sleep, like ever?" Aang said, noting the grand bed was still made.

"Not really," Zuko said. "Katara gave me this little potion once. Worked like magic. I slept all night. It was great. And then I didn't wake up the next day in time, I was still sleeping. Missed this appointment I had with the Minister of Finance. He's one of the few people from Ozai's staff whom I kept, because he's the only one who knows where all the old paperwork is kept. It was a hard sell convincing him to stay, because he doesn't think I'm worthy of the job. That proved it to him. He's threatening to quit."

Zuko probably had not told that story to anyone. He didn't actually have anyone around to tell those stories too when his friends were off completing their own responsibilities around the world. Aang realized Zuko hadn't woken him up to help pack but because Zuko needed someone to talk to. As much as he isolated himself, he still needed someone to talk to every now and then. Especially when he was about to do something he might regret.

"Wait, why are we packing, again?" Aang said, still rubbing a little sleep from his eyes. "And why are we doing it in the middle of the night?"

"Oh, sorry." Zuko said. "Because I'm going to Ba Sing Se. Well, first I should tell you, I went to visit Ozai tonight."

"I thought we agreed you weren't going to do that."

"Well, I didn't know what else to do. Azula isn't telling me anything. She hasn't told anything to the servants so they were no help. Who else am I going to ask?"

"Last time you were visiting him, you started to kind of _act like_ him."

"Well, to be honest, it was a pointless trip. I thought perhaps he knew her better than I did. Maybe he'd know if she had friends or connections in the earth Kingdom or the Colonies. Or a lover, even. He doesn't know anything about her. He couldn't name any of her old school mates. She hasn't been adding more information to her letters since I stopped intercepting them. Still pointless paragraphs about the weather. I don't know what I was thinking talking to him. What did I think they were doing those years I spent chasing you? Having a healthy father-daughter relationship built on communication and trust? I'm an idiot, and he told me that tonight. "

"He doesn't know about the kid, or that she was missing?"

"Of course he knows that stuff. Aang you have no idea how... leaky this palace is. I bet those guards we passed have all run off to tell the servants we were walking around. By the time I leave tomorrow the whole city will know I'm gone. He knew how leaky the palace is. Sometimes he would start rumors and scandals on purpose just to manipulate the public. He hears the guards talking, and sometimes they even talk to him. He knows about the kid, about how she went missing, about my grandfather's favorite Eucalyptus tree that was burned down this morning."

"That's scary," Aang said.

"Yeah. And the scariest thing of all, the stuff I need to leak is not leaking. I know nothing about Azula and what happened to her. The only way I'm going to find out anything is to go to Ba Sing Se myself and see if anyone there recalls seeing her. I was hoping maybe you could come with me. First of all, Apa is faster than any of our ships, second, you're better at talking to people than I am, and it's not safe to go a lone. And honestly I'm really terrified about what I might find and I don't... I don't want to find it by myself." Zuko stopped and twiddled his thumbs.

Aang didn't say anything.

"I need to know what happened to her, Aang."

Still Aang looked uncomfortable. "If she finds out you went, she's going to be furious. Like Katara said. She needs to know she has people she can trust and this is... shady."

Zuko began pulling clothes off the shelves and shoving them into the bag without folding them. "Shady? That's the word you want to use?"

"It's... yeah. Shady. Not cool. Sneaky."

"Her past, it affects her. Katara can definitely tell you that. I can tell you that. You should talk to her. As soon as I bring up something from the past she gets all... pensive, and then she gets super tense and defensive and angry. Or more likely what happens is she brings it up, let's something slip. It's on her mind all the time. I can tell. She just let's something slip and then she gets angry when I inquire about it. And to be honest, she's different than she was when she left. There are things she understands that she didn't before." He kept packing. He selected clothes that looked decent, but not auspicious. He wanted to look respectable, but not to attract attention to himself.

"It still doesn't change the fact that it could destroy her if she found out you left."

"Look," Zuko turned and faced him. "In two or three months I'm going to be an uncle, and I have a whole new level of responsibility you don't really understand at this point in your life. She's going to be a mother, and I don't think she really understands that sort of responsibility either. And if she knows where its dad is, or has friends that she trusts, those people might end up being involved iif they get word. And they might just be the same people who hurt her. She talks all day long about how she doesn't want us digging up the past, but I believe the past might just dig itself up. She might dig it up herself. She doesn't have very good judgement."

"She's a lot better at reading people than you are."

"You found her starving, pregnant, sick, living on the streets. She hadn't even thought to put a bandage on her burns. She needs me to take care of her, which means I need to know what I'm dealing with. Aang I need your help. I'd ask Katara too, but she has to take care of Azula. And frankly I know for a fact I'm not going to get her support. But I really need your help, so are you coming or not?"

Aang stared at the bag with it's various odds and ends poking out of it. His eyebrows wrinkled. He really didn't want to answer, but he had to say no. "If Katara couldn't support you, I can't either. I mean, at the end of the day I have to support her, and well... she's right."

Zuko. "No, then?"

"Sorry," Aang said, shaking his head.

Zuko clenched his jaw. "Okay." He got back to work. "Azula's going to ask about me. I don't know, maybe she will, maybe she won't. Tell her I'm on an emergency diplomatic meeting," he said. "Actually don't tell her that, because if the public hears that there will be a panic, like we're going to war, because stuff... you know... leaks. But you'll think of something to say."

"Katara's going to be furious," Aang said.

"She'll understand, I think on some level at least. Hand me those shoes over there. I think those will be good for walking around the city. I'm sure to find someone who remembers her. She certainly causes enough trouble."

Aang gave Zuko the shoes, the sum of all the packing help he'd been woken up for. Zuko shoved them sloppily into the bag and and then tied the bag shut.

"Do you know when you'll be back?"

"Hopefully before the baby comes. I want to be there. I owe her that amount of support at least." he said. "And also to stop her from doing anything stupid with it. I'll write."

Zuko gave Aang's shoulder's a firm squeeze, then grabbed his bag to head down to the dock, where he would ask his men to ready the ship.


	12. Burning Hands Chapter 12

Azula watched from behind a corner as Zuko and Aang made their way upstairs to ready Zuko's suitcase.

"I just don't know what else to do," she heard her brother say.

She gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. She should had known his promise had been worthless, and yet she had asked for it anyway.

There were a few options of what she could do. She could go back to her room and wait in silence. When Zuko returned she would deal with whatever he had found. Or she could meet him now. It would not be difficult to strike him from behind, prevent him from getting on that boat. As long as she didn't use lightning, it would be easy to frame one of the royal fire-bending guards. But then she would have to deal with the healer and the monk. She could beat them most likely. But killing him would simply cover the shame of her past by creating an entirely new shame. It would not have been an honorable killing, like in an Agni Kai, it would have been a cowardly one.

"Mother, this is how you left me," she whispered. "The same way he's leaving. In the middle of the night, in secret, treachery on your conscience... I don't suppose you know what I should do with him?" But she paused to think about it for a moment longer, and realized Zuko's treachery was not what was bothering her. "But I suppose you also know that a traitor can feel justified, and even so, sometimes it is better to look back on treachery and simply... forget." She sunk down to the floor and put her head in her hands. "I am not afforded that luxury of forgetfulness."

But her mother wasn't there to answer. She hadn't seen her mother with any regularity since undergoing Katara's treatments. The one time she actually thought to take comfort in her visions was after the visions finally stopped.

She could not kill him and she could not let him go. But she did have a third option: give him everything he wanted. She could control him by satiating him. Telling him the truth was the most counter-intuitive solution, but would give her control over the truth, and that was where the true power lay. She began to sweat at the thought of having that conversation with her brother. How would she even begin to put what happened into words?

It was the best option. If he found out the truth, she would be stuck here forever. But if she told him the truth herself?

She paced the hallway, waiting for him to pass her on his way out the door. The time to make up her mind was very quickly running short. Kill him? Let him go? Tell him the truth?

She would stop him as he passed. She would demand to speak with him. Perhaps he would realize it would be a lengthy conversation, and move it to the drawing room where she would tell him the story over a pot of tea. She would give him everything, even the details that stung like acid when she remembered them, that tasted like vinegar on her tongue. "You asked how I burned my hands, who the child's father is, what I was doing those two years in hiding," she would begin.

And when she finished, the emotion of what had happened would hit her, fully, for the first time. She would try to tell it with dignity and detachment befitting a woman of her stature, and she would fail. Her brother would see her cry.

She knew exactly how he would react to that. Take her hand, wrap his arms around her. He would forgive her immediately, simply because of her honesty and her tears. He would finally get the two things he always wanted from her. Information, and the chance to be her brother. Good, martyrous Zuko, the weight of the world on his shoulders, and yet he still had it in him to forgive his sick and expecting sister after coming to the rescue and taking her in from the streets.

All of this would be for his benefit. He would take pleasure in it. It would not be true forgiveness, because the only reason he would forgive her was because of how he received the facts, not because of the facts themselves. He would not wrap his arms around her and dry her tears if he found out the truth on his own. So what was the point?

Perhaps this was the last chance she would ever have to let him be her brother, to have any type of trust between the two of them ever again.

She could hear him approaching from down the corridor. She leaned against one of the pillars underneath a burning torch, partly to ease the burden on her aching back and feet, partly to restore the appearance of the cool confidence she had once had.

When he saw her he jumped dropped his bag, widening his stance and raising his hands, ready to defend himself. She had startled him. He would never break the habit of being startled by her. No matter how much weight she gained, how sick she looked, or how much she changed her hair and clothes. He knew exactly what she was capable of. Though the truth was, she could never admit how much he sometimes startled her. He looked like Father, and sometimes when he entered the room, she couldn't help but sit up a little straighter.

Azula briefly reconsidered the option of simply killing him, but then grinned. "You do amuse me, brother," she said. "Sneaking around at night, visiting libraries and prisons and catacombs."

"What are you doing awake?" he said.

"I got up to ask you that question. And to see you off. I don't suppose I'll see you for several weeks," she said. She stood and walked over to him. "Don't worry. I won't burn the place down in your absence. I wouldn't be able to rule it myself if I did."

He picked up his bag and sighed. "I'm going on a diplomatic trip to Omashu," he said. "I... I know we agreed to keep the past in the past." He struggled for words. "But... I want you to write me any time. If you ever decide to answer my questions. I'll read it."

"If I ever get such an impulse, I certainly will."

Even in the dim light she could tell he we was uncomfortable. "A diplomatic trip you say?" she said. She could have saved him a great deal of trouble by telling him here and now. But instead she nodded. "Don't drown at sea. Not that it would upset me terribly if you did." She crossed her arms and left the pillar where she had been standing to head back to her room. As much as it was to her advantage, she could never tell him the truth. The thought of that, of giving him that satisfaction, made her want to throw up.

Zuko nodded. "I don't intend to." He watched her for a moment with narrowed eyes, and then continued on his way.


	13. Chapter 13

As soon as Zuko was gone, she knew she had made the wrong choice. Anxiety plagued her for the next week or two. She remained in her room most of the time, writing more letters that gave far to little information, practicing her elementary forms without fire. Her dreams grew worse. Each night she saw a little bit of the future she feared the most. She would be locked away once again in the institution, maybe even giving birth there. She would spend the rest of her life locked in straps and cages, while her child was raised by her brother to be a softhearted coward. But she would wake each up morning, realizing that the worst was only likely to happen, but had not happened yet.

Katara's treatments had been been consistently shrinking in pain until Azula almost didn't feel them. But after Zuko left, they suddenly changed. They were almost as excruciating as they had been the first day. Katara was concerned that something had changed. Azula's hands throbbed from the memory of their injury, but she refused to answer Katara's questions.

"I'm disappointed the pain has returned, but not surprised entirely. You can't expect everything to go smoothly in recoveries like this," Katara said.

"No I suppose not," Azula said, wishing with all her heart Katara would simply shut her mouth. Diplomatic trip indeed.

Katara pulled the water off her patient's forehead, but instead of packing up her supplies and leaving she sat down on the bed. "It's time you and I start forming a plan."

"A plan? You want to join me in some grand scheme to usurp my brother? You must not talk about such dangerous things aloud, Healer."

"For the birth," Katara said.

"I thought it was the sort of thing we couldn't control or plan," Azula said. "Usurping nature is also dangerous talk."

"Theoretically if I felt it was necessary I could force you to go into labor, though that can be risky. But, even if we can't plan _when_ it happens, we can plan what we will do when it does. And we can prepare ahead of time." Katara paused. "You look somewhat ashen. Does the topic make you nervous?"

Azula stood up and took off her gloves to go wash her face. "I've trained since I was a small girl by the greatest masters and my own father to fight through pain and exhaustion. I've endured the horrors of the insane asylum, the savage streets of Ba Sing Se, and you frying my brain with spirit water. If my cowardly mother could do this three times, certainly I can handle it once."

"Your face tells me you're not as confident as you say you are" Katara said, "and you don't have to be ashamed of that. It's okay to be nervous."

"I warned you on the first day not to patronize me."

Katara sighed. "All I'm saying is that this process can be very scary. Even for me as a healer, and I've helped with dozen's of births. But if we put a plan in place before hand, where you want to be when it happens, who do you want in the room with you, if you want pain medicine, that can help you feel more in control."

Azula toweled off her face, noticing in the mirror she still looked a little pale. She put on a stiff upper lip, then went over to the window and gripped the bars. "That control is an illusion, it seems."

"A little I suppose. Something could always happen."

"And after the child is born. If my brother doesn't deem me 'lucid' enough to make decisions on its behalf. What control will I have then?"

Katara didn't answer immediately. Azula watched Katara's reflection in the window look down at its fidgeting hands. "I assume he'll at least consider your wishes... We'll speak to him when he returns from his diplomatic trip."

"When he returns from his trip," Azula repeated. The heat from her hands warmed the metal of the bars. She clenched her jaw as she returned to the bed. "I'll make my wish list. We can discuss this plan some other time." She dismissed Katara with a wave of her hand and tried to distract herself with a book.

She could worry about the birth all day long, but it was the chaos of what would follow that truly nagged at the back of her mind.

The next few weeks, Azula still didn't leave her room often. Practicing her forms had become a much more uncomfortable chore due to her size, though she didn't dare stop, using the open space of her floor to move through them. It was one of the few ways she knew how to relieve her anxiety, the knowledge that if worse came to worse, she at least could fight. Perhaps it would be a little unrealistic to assume she could beat anyone while recovering from the birth. But if she had to, she would at least try. And as her healer said, at least she could prepare.

Yuko continued to bring up a basket of fruit each day. Sometimes oranges, sometimes mangoes, and sometimes other things, but always lemons, which she pealed behind closed doors and squeezed into a bowl for their juice. Azula was not always sure what each basket would contain, but despite the young servant girl's betrayal at handing over her letters, she trusted Yuko enough to bring the right fruit. The fruit was more important than even Yuko understood.

Replies to the letters began to pile up on her bedside table. She had read a few, only to discover they had been receiving information from her brother she hadn't given them, about her exile, about her scars, about the child. Her old fire-bending master had told her it was okay to "take some time off from practicing to protect your health," and her uncle in Ba Sing Sing Se had passive-aggressively lamented the fact she hadn't come to him for help when she was living on the streets. She didn't particularly care to hear what these people had to say about things that were none of their business.

Sometimes the people who knew too much sent gifts along with their replies. Some for her, books and scrolls she had no intention of reading, sometimes jewelery. And some for the child, little gowns and blankets and toys. It was overwhelming and unwelcome.

One time she even received a guest.

Yuko knocked on her door one afternoon after the midday meal which Azula had taken in her room, her new norm.

"My Lady," the young girl said. "You have visitors."

Azula turned away from the letter she was writing to face the maidservant. "Are you going to tell me who it is?"

The girl fidgeted uncomfortably. "Relics from the past, they asked me to say."

Azula pursed her lips in annoyance. Perhaps she would have refused the guests if curiosity had not won. The door opened. Azula's heart sunk when she saw Ty Lee's round face poke inside.

"Hey..." said the relic from the past. Ty Lee came inside without asking. Mai was behind her.

"I didn't send the two of you any letters," Azula said.

"Zuko did, though," Ty Lee answered, smiling sympathetically. "We heard about everything."

Mai suspiciously glanced around the room in it's stripped - bare state, picking up a few of the ointments Katara had left on a shelf nearby and glaring at the bars on the curtain-less window. "Well. Everything Zuko knows. Also known as: not much."

Azula looked away from the two of them, returning to her letter.

They stood by the door as the maidservant ducked out into the hall.

"I like what you did with your hair," Ty Lee said, her sweet voice grating on Azula's nerves like a nail on a slate. "It's different... I mean you look very different than I remember. I guess it's been a long time... You look..."

"Like a house," Mai said.

Azula gritted her teeth. "And after your brazen betrayal, after what happened between us and what you did to me, do you actually think you simply can pop in for a visit like we're old friends? You think couple insults and compliments will erase the fact you two stabbed me in the back?"

Ty Lee didn't say anything, looking down at the floor.

Mai stepped forward. "We were told things you had changed. We were told you were undergoing treatment, and that relations between you and the respectable half of the universe had improved.

"You heard wrong, Mai," Azula said. "My mind is clearer now, but that doesn't mean it has been changed. Though you are far from the first to hope that to be the case. I know why you're here. You're here because my brother believes the two of you can dig something out me that he can't."

Ty Lee looked heartbroken. "That's true too," she said. "We have to admit. He did ask us in his letters to talk to you. But, Azula, we really do feel bad about what you've had to go through, and we heard you hadn't been doing well and we we really did hope we could cheer you up."

"Don't feel sorry for people who don't feel sorry for themselves, Ty Lee," Azula said, trying to hide the emotion building up within her. She cursed her brother once again. He was always meddling. Even all the way from the Earth Kingdom he had found ways to meddle. Azula didn't need these traitors waltzing through her chambers, and Zuko had been wrong to send them. What exactly had he expected would happen?

"What happened when you were away?" Ty Lee said, stepping forward. "Whatever it was, we don't want to judge you for it, we just want to know."

"Zuko wants to know, you mean," Azula said. "The audacity... he actually wrote you letters, he actually thought he could sic you on me like a pair of hunting dogs. I won't have it. You two long ago lost your privilege to talk to me as friends!"

"He didn't send us here just to get information. He asked us to keep you company." Mai said. She stopped leaning against the bars on the window and stood up straighter, approaching her old friend without the slightest hint of fear. "How many days have you been in this room exactly, Azula?"

"I have everything I need in here," she answered.

"That's what you don't understand. You never truly understood it. Even when we were children, it was what you thought you 'needed,' and not what was actually good for you. Companionship!"

"Mai..." Ty Lee whispered.

"I actually understand how this works. Zuko does the same thing, hides in his room, shuts out people exactly when he needs them. That's why he and I aren't together any more. It doesn't work for him, and it won't work for you either."

Ty Lee coughed.

"Well," Mai said, when Azula refused to respond. "This was five minutes of my life I'll never get back." She regained her composure. "Take care of that kid, Azula. And yourself if you can." She headed for the door, but Ty Lee didn't follow.

"I have to say hello to the baby before I go," Ty Lee said.

Mai narrowed her eyes. "You have to be kidding me."

Ty Lee approached Azula looking absolutely fearful. "Uhm..." she forced a smile and stretched out her hand. "Is it okay if..." She didn't finish asking, knowing the answer would be no. She put her hand on her old friend's stomach and waited until she could feel the little creature inside kicking around.

Azula felt her entire body tense up at the touched. She didn't understand why she allowed it to continue, why she didn't simply burn the traitor girl to a crisp right there in the middle of the floor. She used to let Ty Lee touch her all the time. As children they had done each others' hair. As they had gotten older, a warm hug or touch to the shoulder had been an every day occurrence, and once or twice it had been much more than a hug. But it was so long ago they were last on good terms, and they had been so young. Had they had a little more time to grow up, perhaps their relationship would have grown into something much deeper and more beautiful, but that window was closed.

Ty Lee had not shown a hint of discomfort at the obvious evidence Azula had been involved with someone else. Her discomfort was from their relationship that had been thrown in the garbage. But no matter the discomfort, Ty Lee always had time for a baby.

Azula looked away, wondering how much longer she would have to endure the indignity.

"Hey, kiddo..." Ty lee said. "Uhm... You can't really see me here, but... I'm an old friend of your mom and your uncle, and... when you get a little older, you can always write your auntie Ty Lee if you ever need advice about anything, okay?"

Ty Lee pulled her hand away and used it to rub the back of her neck. "Bye..." she said to Azula. "Sorry to bother you."

"Get out," Azula said, low and threatening. She straightened her clothes and returned to writing her letter. She only heard the door close behind her, and the silence that told her she truly was alone now.

The experience had brought memories flooding back. Of course Ty Lee could not leave before acknowledging the child. Babies had always been an instant distraction for her. The few times the three of them had traveled unaccompanied, Ty Lee had often stopped to smile at babies in their mother's arms or little children playing in the streets. Dogs too. Babies and dogs had always demanded her instant attention. It had been annoying back then, but now Azula missed it. Even after three years, even though they now were young adults now and the world also was very different, some things apparently had not changed.

Azula struggled, even when alone, not succumb to the emotions she was feeling, fighting the heat building up behind her eyes. She wished that encounter had gone so differently, that it had been as friendly as they had hoped it would be when they came to visit. But she couldn't bring back what was lost. She couldn't bring back her old friendships, she couldn't bring back the flat in Ba Sing Se and odd home she had found there, she couldn't return to the man she had loved. She had known for a long time, but never actually realized, how truly alone she was in the world.

Yuko knocked again. Azula resisted the impulse to shout and send the girl away, but invited her in instead. The young girl bowed and handed Azula another letter.

She tore it open and dismissed the servant.

"My dear child, Azula," the first line read.

Azula rubbed her face. She didn't want to deal with this now. She couldn't deal with this now.

"It's been a very long time since I saw you, and even longer since I spoke to you properly. You grew up out of my sight and it pains me every day knowing I wasn't there to watch over you and keep you safe. Memories are still coming back to me, not all at once, but in waves, and many of them are of you. Your sister asks about you sometimes, where you went, what had happened to you and why when she met you you were so sad. I can't answer her, though I wonder myself."

Water pooled up in Azula's eyes. She didn't want to keep reading but she did anyway. She could almost hear her mother's voice reading the words aloud the way her mother had read stories to her at night when she was very small. After hallucinating visions of her mother for so long, seeing nothing but a contorted product of her imagination, her real mother's words were startling, but in a strange way she didn't want to admit to herself, they were comforting too. And so she kept reading.

"Your brother came for a visit not to long ago, while en route to the Earth Kingdom. We were all saddened you couldn't join, though we were all very relieved to learn you had been recovered safely and that you were being healed by one of the best healers in the four nations. From what your brother has told me, you have been through quite an ordeal. We also are all very thrilled to hear about the baby!"

Azula curled her hands into fists. Of course he had told them everything.

"I wish I could be by your side through all of this. My mother was not there for me when my children were born and I had to deal with becoming a mother all on my own. I don't want that to happen to you. I know you might not be ready to forgive me, and I can understand that. I left you in that horrible pace with that horrible man and with no one to protect you. But I want you to know, all you have to do is write to me, and I will drop everything and come to you on the very next boat. Nothing has every been easy for you, Azula, though you often pretended it was, and this will not be either. But I want you to know that I'll be here waiting to hear back from you, if you ever decide you need me."

It was signed "Love, Mom." That woman had the gumption to refer to herself as "mom." Azula held the letter in her hands for a second. She wanted to read it again, hear her mother's voice reciting her mother's real words. But before she could stop herself she ignited the parchment in her own hands and burned it until it was nothing more than a few black flakes of ash.

Azula collapsed to the floor. She couldn't stop the tears now. She hated herself for giving in to weakness, but she cried anyway. All she had to do was write...

Katara came into the room to find Azula there on the floor beside the bed. She ran over, frightened her patient had taken ill, but Azula helped herself up.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You don't look fine," Katara said.

"I'm fine," she repeated,

"Well..." Katara opened her bag. "We have another round of treatments today as you remember. I don't think it will be long before we can finish them entirely."

"I don't want it," Azula said.

Katara paused. "But... we're almost done! You've made amazing progress. If we start skipping them now, it will take a long time to work our way back up again."

Azula understood this, but she knew the pain from the treatments today, the memories she would have to face, would be unbearable. "I don't care," she said. "Just get out of my room before I burn you from it myself."

Katara looked like she wanted to beg. She huffed in frustration. "You did make a deal you would accept my help. You can't go back now."

"Get out!" Azula through a blast of flame right over the healer's head, a warning shot the peasant didn't deserve.

Katara left, closing the door behind her.

Azula curled up on the bed and allowed her tears to continue.


	14. Chapter 14

The day her brother returned Azula was still in her room. She watched through the barred, curtain-less window as his carriage pulled up to the front of the house. She saw him get out, his head low and shoulders slumped. Aang and Katara were there to greet him. Azula watched him put his hands on their shoulders, watched Katara's hand jump to cover her gaping mouth. He knew the truth. He had broken the promise. She had seen this betrayal coming from miles away, but it still stung like a knife. She watched Zuko stand up straighter and stride through the door of the palace. He was coming to confront her.

Zuko would have only one choice, now that he knew exactly what Azula was. The deals they had made before would be voided. It was over now.

Azula had written her father dozens of times since returning from her exile. He had always been a symbol of strength, competence and control to her. As long as she stayed on his good side, as challenging as that could be, the world would be hers and no harm would come to her. Until one day she would be old enough to command that level of strength and competence and control herself. Perhaps that's why she had been compelled to write to him. But at the end of the day all that strength had not done him any good. The world had changed out from under his feet, and left him an old man locked in a dark cell. He could not help her, even on the slim chance he would want to.

Ignoring the pain in her lower back, she sat and wrote a letter to the one person who could, to one person she had been too frightened to write before. Her hands shook as she inked out the header. She had all her life wondered what it was like to fully be in control, but never had asked what it was like to be subject of it. She thought it would be hard to write, but after all her years of priding herself on her wit and her ability to lie, telling the truth in it's entirety was not difficult. Once she started writing the words flowed easily.

She fanned the ink with her gloved hand, sealed it up with a little wax, and rose to her feet to take it to the falconry. She would send it on a hawk herself. Her maid-servant could no longer be trusted, though even the hawks were often intercepted, a risk she had to take.

After completing this, she decided not to put off the inevitable. She went to confront Zuko. No body betrayed her trust without consequences, even if she should have expected it all along.

She made her way across the great throne room to the little office attached to the side, what had once been Father's office, what should have been hers.

She didn't knock.

He looked up from doing nothing and scowled.

"You went to Ba Sing Se," she said. "When you told me you wouldn't do any more digging into my past."

"I realize why now," he said. "You dare ask me to respect your privacy after what you did... This changes everything, Azula. I wish with all my heart I could unlearn what I discovered but I can't."

"I didn't come here to speak to you about that. I came to speak to you about the fact you made me a promise which you had no intention of keeping. I should have known not to trust you."

"Trust," Zuko began to turn crimson. He suppressed a laugh. "You talk to me about trust while you keep a secret like this. You don't think I should have know the truth before I let you live in my house, walking around my halls?"

"You didn't let me in, Zuko, I'm your prisoner!" She said. She stepped forward, bringing her face within a foot of his. Her hands were beginning to smoke from underneath her silk gloves.

"I could throw you in a real prison if you wanted," Zuko said.

"I'd prefer that than this charade of yours about how much you care about me and my health. I dare you to."

"It would be nothing less than what you deserve," he said. "You know, I really thought you were protecting someone when you asked me not to search through your past. I really wondered who it was. Scenario after scenario crossed my mind who this lover of yours was. Perhaps he was cruel to you. Perhaps he had been your partner in crime and you wanted to spare him the punishment of the law. Perhaps this child had been conceived through some twisted impropriety. None of them made made any sense to me, though I could not think of what else it could be. In hindsight it should have been obvious exactly who you were trying to protect." He stood up. His face darkened. "I came to my office hoping to cool down before I confronted you, but I don't have a choice now. I know exactly why you didn't want me searching for the father of your child. It was because you knew I wouldn't find him."

Azula scoffed. "Then you know nothing?"

"I know that his name was Hiro, born 20 years ago in the Fire Nation Colony of Yu Dao to middle class parents who were killed during the uprising. He was nothing more than a day laborer. And the reason you knew I would not find him is because he is dead. You killed him with your own hands."


	15. Chapter 15

Azula glared at her brother for a long moment. He waited for her to react to the accusation, but she just kept her face furious and stern.

Katara and Aang were leaning through the open office door, eyes as wide as lemons. Several of the servants had gathered behind them.

"You are quite low, accusing me so publicly, Zuko."

"I want the rest of the story Azula! How you came to be living in the flat with him and the others, why you did it, and why we found you half dead in the gutter afterword. I want it now."

"And I want to lay in bed with a hot water bottle for my aching back," she said, "But it doesn't appear that's going to happen this afternoon is it!"

"Talk!"

"Close the door!"

Zuko's chest heaved with anger. He closed his eyes, then got up to shut the door himself.

Azula lowered herself onto a cushion in a corner of the room. "I wasn't kidding about my back."

"I'm sure your back doesn't hurt nearly as badly as being burned alive," he said.

"You think you're funny don't you?" she said. She took a deep breath and began.

 _You have to understand, Brother, that I didn't go to Ba Sing Se because I found anything the slightest bit attractive about it. I went because there was no where else I could go. The Fire Nation and its colonies were places I would to easily be recognized. The same with Omashu. I was not about to test my luck in the country or the wilderness. Ironic that the city I once ruled with my own fists was my last safe haven. I don't remember very much about the time after I ran from you and our mother. I was indeed very far gone. But I remember making that decision very clearly. I believe I got there hitching rides with local traders, bargaining with threats._

 _When I arrived, I had no title, no name, no possessions. I didn't even have my own mind. I suppose I still don't have all of it. I had no claim to anything other than the tattered clothes on my back which tagged me as Fire Nation and a target of hatred. The war there is far from over in the minds of most. They don't forget the time their king was usurped by a lone princess in a costume. They don't forget the Dragon of the West knocking at their gates for 600 days or the drill that almost got in. Even though peace has been in effect for years, if you ask anyone there, there is indeed a war in Ba Sing Se. I suspect it will be more than a hundred years before the people of the mud ever forgive us from trying to bring them into the civilized world._

 _She followed me incessantly, begging me to go back to her, to you. Of course that was a trick, to get me back into that horrible hospital where I would once again be beaten and starved and things far worse. Those lies of hers kept me awake at night. I don't know if I slept it all. It was usually far to cold to sleep anyway. Father was following too, furious over the shame of royal blood, hiding the night away in the filthiest alleys imaginable, steeling tiny meals just to save herself from the brink of death. And you were there. Jealous as always. Irrational as always. Two faced and treacherous as always, taunting me. No wonder I could not sleep. You were the real reason I could never return._

 _Perhaps I could have improved my state greatly using force. One show of what my own hands could do, my own flame, people would have given me whatever I wanted. Well, perhaps in the beginning they would, but then they would have returned later in greater numbers. Fights I could certainly win, but not without great cost or risk. Trust me. I tried it. I have many other scars you haven't seen. So I lived as a beggar and a pick-pocket. And as horrible as it was, I ate._

 _In this manner I survived the remainder of the summer and fall. Come winter my survival was in greater jeopardy. Once the sun sinks low, snow and ice and whichever evils the sky contrives are thrown at my unsheltered body, and I sometimes make it to morning on the brink of death._

 _For a while I plotted my revenge. How I would return and kill you in your sleep. But I could hardly find enough coins for a loaf of bread, much less supplies for an entire journey back to the Fire Nation. I gave up on that and concentrated on staying alive. Perhaps had I been more... lucid as in the days before, I could have climbed my way off the streets, but... I was not lucid. I was not in my right mind at all._

 _One evening I decided to improve my circumstance by stealing a blanket. Just one, off a street vendor. I got away and he lost track of me. I took it with me to an alley where I had been staying. For the first time in weeks I fell asleep easily. But I did not sleep long._

 _The vendor tracked me down and woke me violently. His sons were with him. Both Earth Benders. Neither of them were skilled, but they were aggressive enough. I managed to fight off the vender himself, burned his face clean off. But the sons had me cornered. I could have handled them as well, but both of them were knocked to the ground by a fire blast that was not my own. Someone had come to rescue me._

 _My two rescuers blasted the vender's sons onto the brick pavings from where they did not get up. Then they grabbed my hands and hulled me away._

 _I told them that I hadn't needed their help, that I could have handled those two thugs on my own. The first girl, she turned to me and she said, 'perhaps you could have, but you shouldn't have to.' And that was the last we ever discussed it._

 _The two strangers brought me to the place they were staying. They were no better than street urchins themselves, having claimed an abandoned bath house as their home. They were not alone there. There were five others waiting for their return._

 _They had come to get me. Apparently the group of them had been watching me for a week or two, planning how they would ask me to join them. We all had one thing in common. We were fire benders in an Earth Kindom city, and because of this, we were doomed to eek out an existence in the filthiest, darkest edges of the outer ring. We were all targets, but it was better to be targets together they told me. I wasn't sure I agreed, but the food they gave me was hot, and I had not eaten in two days._

 _I did not give them my real name. Perhaps at that point I didn't remember it. I told them it was Ty Lee. She was the one thing from home I did miss._

 _The first night I was there I still could not sleep. I was still having nightmares. It had only been a few weeks since I'd been released from that awful institution and sometimes I thought I was still there, still bound to my own bed. I made a great fool of myself in front of these strangers. I must have cried out._

 _It was the smallest among them, a girl of about ten years old who decided to take it upon herself to cure my nightmares. She gave me her blanket as an extra, cradled my head in her small, filthy arms. She hushed me like a child. She must not have been an orphan her entire short life, because she knew how to do that. Someone must have taught her. I seriously considered killing her right there. It was a humiliating experience really, but I knew if I did, they would throw me back out into the streets. So I endured it, and when she was done I slept better than I had in a very long time._


	16. Chapter 16

Azula continued her tale.

 _They asked me about my nightmares the next day. They did not push me to answer when I refused. But they did formally invite me to stay. Perhaps they would not have if they had known who I was, but I accepted. I needed their help though admitting that to myself was the most tortuous thing I've ever done, however the abandoned, drafty bathhouse was far preferable to the streets._

 _I stayed with them, accepting their food and spare clothes, allowing the child to put her arms around me. They took care of me when the visions plagued me with a compassion I have not known before, with their arms around me, with hushed voices. It shocked me. It was foreign. And it caused my nightmares and visions to decrease. It was loneliness, if you remember, Zuko, that caused these visions in the first place. Being relieved of the loneliness did more wonders than one could imagine._

 _And so as I became less of a guest and more as a member of one of them, helping to earn my keep, the nightmares began to decrease ever so slowly._

 _At first I helped them to exist the way they had been existing before. Aiding in picking pockets, relieving the street vendors of their grain and cloth, selling contraband. But after a few months, when my mind was functioning more clearly, I began to realize our collective strength could be used for much more than petty thievery and picking up the scraps the black market could throw at us. There were eight of us. All of us were fire benders, and though we could not use our abilities without expecting backlash from the suspicious community, because of where we came from and what we were we had the drive to improve our lives and pull ourselves out of the gutter._

 _Soon my mind was once again sharp enough to plan. There were a few strong men among us who could work day jobs for the local businesses in the city. I had seen several signs around the streets asking for workers. There was a factory sewing shirtss nearby where we were staying that would employ those of us who could not do heavy lifting. The work would not be as profitable, but it would be steadier and less dangerous. And more respectable. From there we could save up for a place of our own._

 _I took leadership over the group easily. I realized that though I had not been able to rule our entire nation, the concept was no different than leading a small group of outcasts off the streets. I could recognize each of their strengths, and their weaknesses, and employ them efficiently at different tasks for a common goal. Convincing the others to go along with my plan was not difficult. You know how much of a wordsmith I can be._

 _Slowly we began to save, small amounts at first, then larger amounts as we refined the art of working for wages. A proceed of their earnings were handed over to me, which I hid in a clay jar in a secret location in the bath house, to protect it from the drinkers and gamblers among the group. When I was not sweating away in the factory sewing shirts till my fingers bled, I placed myself in charge of acquisitions. I took the savings to the market each morning to haggle the best price for the supplies we needed. Eventually I was able to coerce a local land lord into allowing us to rent a small one room flat at reduced price. It was what we could afford at the time, but it was our plan to eventually work our way up to more comfortable accommodations._

 _I was very skilled leader. It did not bring the pride that comes with commanding an army or winning great battles in the name of our flag. Every day I woke up aching in my chest to return to that life, loathing this new place, my new name, my new life. But over time I came to accept that this was where I was, whether I liked it or not, and I could not stop fighting. I discovered a simpler form of pride. And as I became more comfortable commanding my own army of 7, the thought of leaving seemed more and more... distasteful. They relied on me._

 _In charge of finance and acquisitions as I already stated was myself. There were my initial rescuers, two sisters orphaned from birth who went to work in the factory. They were devoted, conscientious workers with true Fire-bender drive. There was a young man from here in the Capital who'd fled here after his parents were executed on our father's orders. He had never had any formal Fire bending training, wasted talent. But he was very strong, and found work easily because of it. There was a boy from a farming village who'd come to the city to work. Every coin he made which I did not collect for our mutual benefit, he sent home to his family._

 _Then there was the child whom I mentioned earlier. Because she was too small to work in the factories, I put her to work in maintaining the flat itself, a task she executed with precision, she was so eager to please. She was a bleeding heart who gave coins to beggars if I took my eyes off of her. Our mother would have liked her. That was something I had to fix. She was in desperate need of someone to teach her how the world really worked, and I took advantage of her early attachment to me to do this._

 _However, many of my attempts to train her were opposed by her brother, whose name and origin you already know. He was in charge of the bulk of her education, spending hours each night teaching her to write and read. His own happiness was purely a function of hers. He carelessly spoiled her, and I soon found that if I wanted to maintain his respect, I would need to take a gentler approach with the girl._

 _I did earn his respect, and he tried very hard to earn mine. I must admit despite his flaws he succeeded. He did this initially through the ancient art._

 _Our group would practice fire-bending only in secret, outside the gates of the city, in the most deserted of alleys. Hiro would hesitate to bring his sister because of the danger, though I eventually persuaded him to do so, because wasting her potential would be a desecration. His fear was rational. If word got out of what we were, we could have been dismissed from our jobs or evicted from the flat, if not killed by a mob. We had to be careful. We couldn't speak of it, even in our own home for fear the neighbors would hear through the walls._

 _But we managed to practice. And you should have seen him practice. He was almost as skilled as our father and our uncle were, and certainly more skilled than you. His parents had possessed the means to provide him and his sister with decent instruction before their death. But no amount of instruction is a substitution for natural talent. He moved with precision and... grace, unbelievably quick on his feet. He defeated me when we sparred in practice. Well, once or twice._

 _If I had had more time with him, had circumstances been more favorable, perhaps I could have taught him how to produce lightning, or even blue flame. But to do that, I would have had to reveal to him my identity. You understand how contentious things are, here and in the earth kingdom. It would have been very dangerous to do. I was tempted to take that risk. His untapped, wasted talent kept me awake at night, and I yearned with all my heart to just teach him. But I did not want to take that risk._

 _But still we practiced together, sometimes with the group, but with increasing frequency, we would practice alone. It had been a very long time since I'd faced a worthy opponent to practice with. It was an opportunity I didn't waste._

"But other than your skill," Zuko said, "It appears you had very little in common."

Azula snarled at the interruption. The pain in her back had not been relieved by sitting down, and his voice was just one more irritating distraction.

"We shared our hatred of you," she told him. "It was because of your hesitation to defend Yu Dao from the uprising that his parents were killed."

"Did he support Ozai?"

"He supported his sister," Azula said. "Not even the welfare of his own country was of any concern to him next to her. He could care less about Yu Dao and its defense from uprisings. You were a villain because you had left his sister an orphan. At the end of the day I don't think he truly had any loyalties to anything beyond her."

"What about to you?"

Azula glared at him. Her face contorted with a strange mix of emotions.

She kept going.

 _Soon after our one year anniversary of living in the flat, he and I disclosed to our flat mates that our relationship had taken on a more amorous quality. The affair had been my idea. We already lived in close proximity, and had begun to share many of our duties. Besides the details of my past I hid from him, we knew each other quite well. In hindsight it was not a logical thing to do, it would only make things more complicated after they had been going so well, and since I planned to return to the Fire Nation eventually, there was no point entangling myself with someone I would have to leave behind. But I justified it to myself, telling myself it would help me to keep his loyalty and make it easier for me to maintain order in the household. Perhaps I was not as lucid as I thought I was._

 _Hiro's sister was enthralled with the news. She wrapped her arms around me and began blabbering about how I was now a part of her family, and all that. The others congratulated us without question. Perhaps they thought it was the inevitable result of unrelated individuals living in such close quarters. Or perhaps they had predicted it would happen all along._

 _There isn't much I can tell you about our relationship. It was rather ordinary. We spent time training and talking together, sought privacy in the same hidden places we practiced, shared a poor excuse for a bed on the floor of the flat near the others. We had our spats, but so does every couple. He could be... irresponsible, spending many of his evenings out with the drinkers and gamblers. He wasn't perfect. He was not always sweet or romantic either. He didn't care for gifts or gestures or flowers or poetic talk, not that I would have tolerated a sap. However he was always civil to me, which is more than many women receive._

 _In hindsight all of this seems rather dull and infantile. I don't know why I allowed him to envelop as much of my mind as he did. It seemed so important while it was happening. I'm ashamed of it to be perfectly honest, ashamed of tolerating his flaws, ashamed of showing him my deepest emotions, ashamed of getting caught up in that nonsense when I should have been planning my return here, my return to true glory._

 _Eventually he asked me to marry him. I asked him for 3 days to consider my answer. I almost said yes. I was comfortable in his presence and didn't enjoy the thought of being separated from him or being with anyone else. I suppose for a peasant on the street that is good enough a reason to marry someone. But I am not a peasant._

 _Imagine if Father discovered I had married a day laborer. He'd hang himself in that cell, is what he'd do, rightly so. To marry Hiro would have meant staying in that horrible city forever, forever keeping the false name I'd told to him. It would have meant renouncing my royal blood when a return to victory was still possible. I could not do that. I think I told him we were too young. But he could see the real discontent I had for this place, though he couldn't understand what it was._

 _He would furrow his brows and push hair out of my face each night. But he never was quite sure of what he was seeing, so he never asked me what was wrong. I was never quite sure of it myself._


	17. Chapter 17

_Little changed between us until, well, until about a month before those horrible friends of yours found me in the street._

 _I know what the typical symptoms look like. An aching head, lack of focus, lack of blood. I had forgotten how foul the streets really smelled before, but my senses had heightened. I had forgotten how little we actually had to eat until I noticed I was hungry more often._

 _I believe I was at work, in one of the factories, sewing shirts, when I finally put the pieces together and realized what was going on. It was the type of realization that causes one's vision to blur, and blood to rush into one's limbs. I almost had to quit working, I felt so ill. Somehow I managed to shove it from my mind long enough to finish the day's work, but I promptly threw up and went to bed when I returned home._

 _I didn't tell anyone for a long time. I didn't sleep. You know how I am when I'm lucid. I have a plan for everything. But I didn't have a plan for this. I tried to predict a favorable outcome, and I failed._

 _I suppose it is good fortune your friends found me. My child will be brought into the world by a trained healer, fed by a wet nurse, provided everything it will ever need for the rest of its life. It will be a member of the royal family. I will provide for it a proper firebending master, to hone the gift it will no doubt receive from its mother and father._

 _If I had stayed in the flat we would not have been able to afford a healer. It probably would have been born right there on the floor with only my clueless flatmates to assist. Assuming I didn't miscarry from starvation and hard work first. And as soon as it was born I would have to guard its cradle day and night from the rats, protect it from the plagues that swept through the city like brushfire, keep it from starving._

 _And if it survived, what then? It would be nothing but a pariah. Royal blood doomed to a life of marginalization, with no chance to embrace what it really was. Imagine if Father had gotten word of that?_

"He didn't have any problem when it happened to me," Zuko said, interrupting again.

"That was your own doing," Azula answered.

"And going to Ba Sing Se was yours," he answered. "You could have come home at any point. We would have welcomed you. You never would have gotten pregnant in the first place. You would never would have become a murderer. I wouldn't have sent you back to the institution if you hadn't wanted me to."

"You say that now," she said. "Out of guilt. You know for a fact you would have shipped me back to that place in restraints the moment you caught me, if you had actually tried to pursue me. There was nothing you could do for me."

"I would have-"

"Save it, Zuko." she said. "Whatever you 'would have done,' you know that's a lie. You've long ago lost your right to promise to treat me like a real member of your family."

"And you've long ago lost your right to play the victim," he said. "Give me the rest, Azula."

"You've already made up your mind about who and what I am. I don't know what good the rest of the story will do for you."

But she continued anyway.

 _I could not hide it for much longer. It was time to come to a decision._

 _I was up late, waiting for Hrio to return. He was no stranger to nights out in the city with the spending money he was allowed. My anxiety had begun to frighten him even further away. I have told you already, he was not a perfect person. He saw I was in distress and he was too much of a coward to talk about it. Perhaps that was my fault for dismissing so many of his questions for so long. But I was angry that night. He did not come home till early in the morning and when he did he was not sober._

 _He walked over to where we slept and he tried to kiss me. I took him out into the hallway. Even then he tried to duck away. He didn't want to speak with me. He didn't want to deal with whatever it was. I didn't let him._

 _"_ _You will listen to me!" I told him._

 _"_ _But it's late and we can do this tomorrow." It's a miracle I didn't kill him then._

 _"_ _You are going to listen to me," I said. "We cannot stay here."_

 _I got him to sit down and hear my plan. We were going to come here to the Fire Nation, not to the Capitol, but at least somewhere we would not be outcasts. It was not viable to stay in Ba Sing Se anymore. "We have to go back," I said._

 _"_ _Back?" he said to me. "My dear I have never been to the Fire Nation in all my life. I was raised in the Colonies, in the Earth Kingdom. I'm practically a native of the Earth Kingdom."_

 _So I asked him, "But you've never dreamed of the motherland? Never wanted to be among people of your own kind?"_

 _"_ _I am among my own kind here, in the flat with all of you."_

 _I told him that it was more important than ever that we leave._

 _He told me we couldn't afford it. I told him we had enough for two boat tickets, and that's all we would need._

 _He lost his cool completely, bright red. "You are suggesting I leave the friends I've had for years! You are suggesting I leave my sister!"_

 _"_ _They will manage. But we cannot stay."_

 _"_ _She is all I have, I am all she has!"_

 _So I told him. "She has the other flat mates and you have me, and you have a child I'm carrying! But you know what, you can stay here all you want. But I will not let our child, my blood, grow up in this wretched place."_

 _Oh his face. I don't know what I expected it to look like. I was hoping he would be happy at the news. I wasn't happy about it, but I was hoping he at least would be, so I could know he'd be there to stand by my side. But he wasn't happy either. He was just pale._

"What did he say?"

"He didn't say anything," Azula said. "He froze for a moment, turned down the hall, and walked away."

Zuko wrinkled his eyebrows. "You actually suggested he leave his sister!"

"Her needs would be provided for by the other flatmates. She would be in no danger. And his child was his priority, wouldn't you agree? And don't pretend I was asking him to do something you didn't do yourself, brother."

"You..." Zuko curled his fists. "And I'm guessing you followed him."

"No," Azula said. "I returned inside and began to pack. I didn't know if he would follow me tomorrow to train station, but I wasn't staying. I had made up my mind."

"Did he follow you?"

"He returned before I could leave," she said. "Perhaps if he hadn't, he would still be alive."


	18. Chapter 18

_The shock had worn off slightly, though the lack of sleep had drained him. But he was actually happier. He was in fact beaming with pride._

 _I was home alone when he returned. The others had gone off to work, and I had sent his sister to the market for supplies. He came into the flat to find me taking inventory of my very few belongings. "My Darling, I have found a solution to our dilemma."_

 _I gave him one last chance._

 _He told me what he had done this morning. "My darling, I've found work. Good work, it will be enough to pay for a new house for you and my sister and the child, and not in the lower ring either. We'll be moved up to the middle ring as soon as final arrangements have been made."_

 _I did not believe him in the slightest. But he kept going. I should have cut him off there. I should have told him whatever he had done, it would not bring us back to the Fire Nation where we belonged. It was what he said next... He told me he had joined the ranks of the military. He was an Earth Kingdom soldier._

 _"_ _That is ridiculous!" I told him. "It is the Earth Kingdom who killed your parents! It is the Earth Kingdom who keeps us oppressed and living in secret and starving, Hiro. You would turn your back on your entire race! God forbid they find out you are a Fire Bender."_

 _"_ _But they already have," he told me. "My Darling, I told them what I could do, they moved me to the front of the line. The war is over now, they don't care about what you are are where you came from as long as you are willing to fight and die for them. And I am. The people of the city hate us, but the state is more practical. I'm not the first Fire-bender to sign up, they have an entire unit I'd be training with."_

 _"_ _But what about your family?"_

 _"_ _My parents were killed by rebels, not the Earth King whom I'd be serving."_

 _"_ _But you aren't even an Earth Kingdom citizen!"_

 _The stupidest expression fell over that handsome face of his. "I've lived here all my life," he simply said._

 _I remember that very distinctive feeling, when I realized he had never been whom I thought he was, he was not from the same world I had come from, though we had the same race, and same abilities._

 _"_ _This way," he said, I could provide for our family without uprooting my sister yet again. I leave for training next week."_

 _"_ _You leave to betray me and everything I thought the both of us stood for!"_

 _He changed in that instant. He became so... soft. "Oh my Darling, don't cry, don't cry! I'm not leaving forever. After I finish training I probably will just be posted here in the city. I'm not going anywhere! The war is over after all."_

 _"_ _You look at that mob outside our doors and you tell me the war is over!" I told him. "You look at me, look at where I come from, and you tell me that you have not just made a deal with the enemy!"_

 _"_ _Wherever you come from you live here now."_

 _"_ _And I should have gone back long ago!" I told him. "I should have gone back before you left me, to fight for the people I was taught from birth to never trust. You would have our child raised among such people. They may use you for your skill, but they will never accept us, never! And you could care less!"_

 _"_ _That is not true," he said. "I'm doing this for you! For our kid!"_

 _"_ _You have no idea what our child even is!" I told him, "what I am."_

 _He asked me what. So I answered._

 _I told him. "I am Azula of the fire nation, and your child is 3_ _rd_ _in line for the throne. And you would dare fight in the army of our nation's enemy. You would dare abandon me after I trusted you? I will show you exactly what I am, what makes a royal of the Fire Nation, exactly what our child will grow up to be."_

 _A rage unlike any I've experienced before overcame me. I burned him. Right there in our flat, with hot blue flames I had suppressed up to this point to hide my identity. Through the walls into the next room. I burned him until the entire wing went up in flames around me, until my hair began to burn along my clothes and skin, until I could see his bones._

 _"_ _Traitor!" I called him, as he cried out. He did not cry out for long. It was quick work bringing him down, but I didn't stop until I was forced to._

 _I passed out from the pain and the smoke. If I hadn't, I think I would have continued to burn until my entire body, not just my arms were consumed. One of the neighbors pulled me out of the burning room._

 _When Hiro's sister and the others returned she ran to me and put her arms around me, slapping me until I awoke. I believe the neighbors had run to fetch them after they had dragged our bodies from the burning building. No one had showed her her brother yet. They never did. She screamed enough at the sight of me._

 _We slept that night back at the old bathhouse. One of my two rescuers told the young girl that her brother was dead. Her cries could be heard through the entire city._

 _The other rescuer dealt with me._

 _She threw me onto the bathhouse floor, pinning me down with her foot. "We know it was you," she said. "You were blabbering as they pulled you out of the destruction you created, how you weren't finished with him and how his 'betrayal must not go unpunished.' You killed him. And you should give me one good reason I should not kill you myself right here."_

 _I gave her two. The first was that she couldn't if she tried. The second was my child._

 _So they took a vote. After everything they had done for me. After everything I had done for them, I was to be thrown out onto the streets alone. They worked together to shove me out of the bathhouse and lock the door behind me. Hiro's sister cried for them to show me mercy. They had not explained to her why that was already their form of mercy._

 _After all I had done for them..._

 _I never saw them again. For the next two weeks I did what I had done before, kept myself alive. Until against my will I was brought here. I don't know how much more of this story you want, Brother, but that is the truth._


	19. Chapter 19

Azula held one gloved hand tightly in the other, glad she didn't have to look at the scars. She readjusted her body on the cushion hoping she could get comfortable, but the pain in her back had not gone away entirely, only coming and going in waves.

Zuko took a deep breath. "You do realize what this means?"

"I know what you think it means," she said. "It means you believe you have license to do whatever you choose with me and my child."

"I won't send you back to the hospital," Zuko said, "but I may be forced to send you somewhere else. It certainly means I can't give you free reign of the palace, and it certainly means that... well. It means you can't have free access to the child either."

Azula looked up at him. Her face darkened.

"It was one thing when you were soldier on the wrong side of a war, Azula. A murderer is quite a different thing."

"Hiro was a traitor. To his nation and to me! Tell me you wouldn't do the same thing if you were in my situation!"

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response," he said.

"We made a deal!" she said. She slowly got to her feet, using the wall for support.

"We made a deal when I believed you were a sick young woman who had been victimized by someone taking advantage of your sickness, Azula. New information means a new deal."

"You've always been a traitor, haven't you, Zuko. You betrayed our nation to fight for the Avatar. You always supported our coward of a mother who left us in the dead of night. You ignored the promise you made me not to pick through my past. And now you're undoing a deal you proposed yourself. You have always been a two-faced traitor."

"And you have always been a liar," he said. "And you have always been violent." Zuko called through the door for the guards.

Azula saw the handle of the door turn in the corner of her eye. She couldn't let them take her. She doubted when they locked her up that her new accommodations would be nearly as comfortable as her barren bed chambers.

She grabbed Zuko's arm and pulled him against her body. She wrapped one arm around his neck and and used the other to generate a blade of blue flame she held to his throat.

He could feel the large mass of her stomach up against him. He could not understand how she could move fast enough to grab him with with all the extra weight. But then of course, even now she was still practicing, each day up in that room of hers, slowly moving through the forms. If she could stand, she would practice. Only now he could not fight back. He couldn't think of a way to knock her off of him without hurting her.

The guards opened the door and saw her with their Fire Lord in her grasp.

"If you want the throne to change hands again, you really should just try stepping through that door... Just try it. I wouldn't mind being Fire Lord."

The guards stepped back.

"I highly suspect you're going to kill me anyway," Zuko said.

"Unless you feel comfortable punching a pregnant woman in the gut..." she said. "Though in all honestly," she added, tightening her grip around his neck, "making up my mind really is the fun part. I haven't quite finished yet."

"Using your own child as a human shield," Zuko said.

"Get on the ground," she told him.

She lowered him onto his stomach and pulled his arms behind his back. She didn't really need him on the ground. The truth was she was tired of standing. She wasn't going to admit how physically compromised she was. But no one in the room forgot who they were dealing with. Even a physically compromised Azula was still easily one of the most dangerous people on earth.

Azula was just beginning to think of what her demands would be when Katara shoved past the guards and burst into the room.

"Azula! You don't have to do this." She opened the her water canteen and got ready to strike.

Azula brought a blade of flames close to her brother's neck.

"Katara, she's not the type you can reason with."

"For the first time in your life, brother, you're right about something. Guards. Take the peasant healer and her annoying boyfriend out of here. Preferably in chains. Don't let me see them again."

The guards hesitated but realized quickly who was in charge of the situation. The guards grabbed Katara and pulled her out of the room. Katara could not to protest, not with blue fire up against her friend's throat.

Azula took a deep breath. She wanted nothing more than to return to her room and sleep off the ache in her back which was only growing worse. She knew that she should not be exerting herself like this, but she would only need a few more minutes of holding her brother hostage before she could escape properly. She wasn't sure where she would go, but she didn't care.

"You," she said to the head guard, pleased to see he was starting to sweat. "I want you to stand out in the hall, whichever servants or soldiers who come running you are to tell them that everything is under control. Do you understand!"

He looked down at Zuko.

"Just do it!" Zuko said, who to Azula's delight was starting to sweat as well.

"Excellent work, brother. Spoken like a true king. And you," she turned to one of the younger guards. "You will go to the stables. I want a carriage readied in five minutes. Because either I will be on it, leaving this city with only an unarmed driver and no pursuit whatsoever, or I will be ripping the crown off of your dead Fire Lord's head and putting it on myself."

"Where do you think you're going with that baby? Zuko said. "You won't make the journey in your condition."

"If you don't shut up, your condition will be far worse!" Azula said. "I'll just have to figure it out I suppose."

The guard ran to complete the instructions.

"The rest of you," she said. "You're going to take me, and my brother to the stables." She paused. The last thing she wanted to do was make that trip across the courtyard and subject herself the the bumpy carriage ride. The pain was growing worse. She could barely speak now, it was so consuming. Just a few more minutes. That was all she needed. She continued. "You will bring me and Zuko to the stables. He and I will get into the carriage and ride out of the palace grounds to the gates of the city. With no followers. Do you understand. If I am pleased by how that little joy-ride goes. I will release him onto the street before I leave for the next town. Any complications, any deviations from that plan and the only thing I will be releasing from that carriage is a corpse."

She very slowly stood up, pulling her brother with her.

"This is reckless," Zuko said.

"You are not in a position to talk," she answered.

The guards walked with her and Zuko down the hallway. They passed Katara and Aang who were standing with another pair of guards on either side of them, blocking the two of them from intervening. Yuko was carrying the daily fruit basket up to her mistresses quarters, but she dropped them in shock when she saw what was happening. Azula took a moment to note that mangoes had been included in the basket today, rolling on the floor every which way, becoming dirty and bruised and wasted from the fact they would not be needed.

They almost made it to the first outer courtyard.

Azula stopped, just a hundred yards from the door. Zuko wondered if there was some way he could break free of her grasp without having to injure her, but he didn't have to. She fell to the marble floor, collapsing onto her knees and doubling over. The pain had gone from an ache to a lightning strike. The blue flame with which she had been threatening Zuko's life sputtered out of existence while her face contorted. He grabbed her first gloved hand and then her second and pinned them behind her back.

"You slipped up," he told her.

"I can still kill you," she said.

"You want me to give you a second to catch your breath first?" he said.

She gritted her teeth.

Most of the guards were relieved, exhaling deeply and wiping the sweat off their brows. But one of them took one look at Azula and frowned. "I don't think she's going anywhere anytime soon," he said. "She needs the healer."


	20. Chapter 20

Azula had to be carried up the stairs to her room on a stretcher. The guards who brought her laid her carefully on the bed. By then she had already broken into a cold sweat. She knew what was happening, but why on earth did it have to happen now? The pain wasn't nearly as intolerable as the humiliation of losing control of the situation, of everyone watching her bow down to nature like a week, ordinary human being.

"Well, I suppose this will be a story to tell the grandchildren," Zuko said to Katara as he watched from the doorway.

"Is she..." Aang looked at Katara.

"Yep," Katara said. "You two if you really want, you can wait outside, but in all likelihood, this is going to take a very long time."

Katara checked her bag to make sure she had all the supplies she needed, then went into the room and shooed the guards away, but not before asking them to send for the maidservant. Then she closed the door.

Azula lay on the bed on her side, clutching the sheets in her hands which still wore the silk gloves.

"You threatened to kill a very dear friend of mine today, Azula, on top of many other pretty monstrous things you've done. I'm tempted not to offer you anything for the pain. But I will anyway." Katara uncorked a bottle from her bag and offered it to her patient.

"I don't want it," Azula said. "I won't put that in my body. I want to keep my mind sharp."

"Then you've proven yourself foolish twice today," Katara said, returning the bottle to her bag of supplies. She got to work washing her hands in the basin nearby.

"I'll be the judge of my own foolishness," Azula said, "in both instances."

Katara untied Azula's hair and helped her change into some lighter, more comfortable clothes. Azula hesitated before removing her gloves, but all the secrets were out in the open now, and there was no advantage in covering up now.

"How long is this going to take?" she asked the healer, her voice breathy.

"Perhaps all night. It usually takes longer for your first." Katara answered.

"What am I supposed to do that entire time?"

Katara sighed. "We wait. I brought some socks to mend."

The maidservant arrived bearing towels and a bucket of clean water.

"Yuko, you do have a strong stomach, right?"

The young girl hesitated, then nodded.

"We don't want you to faint. When I was assisting my grandmother with births back my village she always reminded me I was brought into the world the same way. You have no reason to be afraid. Okay?"

The girl nodded.

Azula rolled on her back hoping she could get comfortable, which of course she couldn't. She was resentful her healer appeared to care more about her assistant's comfort than hers. Azula wanted to ask more questions, but didn't feel like enduring Katara's patronizing, unbearably chipper answers. Katara had tried several times discussing what was going to happen when the baby arrived. Azula had dismissed her each time because of that tone.

She wasn't used to allowing those around her to see her as anything other than royal blood, never a human being. She had been trained since her on birth to cast an appearance of being something more than human, she had been third in line for the throne, bearing the divine right to rule. She could see on her maidservant's face, the shock of realizing her mistress looking so humbled, and Azula despised every second of it.

Katara washed her hands in rice wine, and put her hands on her patient's stomach. She suddenly huffed. "Why did you do it!" she said.

Azula looked up at the healer and then pulled her elbow over her eyes and her sweating brow. "That's a discussion you want to have now?"

"Did what?" the maidservant said from her corner.

"This doesn't concern you, girl!" Azula shouted. "None of this concerns you, in fact!"

"Just answer the question," Katara said. "We listened to that whole story through the door. All he was trying to do is take care of you and his sister and his kid, and you killed him! In cold blood!"

"You know what I am, you always have. Don't look surprised."

Katara's face was contorted. "I'm not... I just don't understand it. You were this close to being happy. So close! And you destroyed it!"

Azula paused. "You don't have to remind me of that fact," she said. "I suppose it was for the same reason you almost neglected to offer me pain medicine. Because you thought it was what I deserved."

"He didn't deserve..." Katara stopped herself. There was no point in discussing it further. "I still have that medicine in case you change your mind, which I'm sure you will." Katara went to wash her hands again. "We're not even close to delivery. Just... try and get comfortable if you can."

The evening faded into darkness. Katara lit an oil lamp on the stand beside Azula's bed and laid a cool wet cloth over her patient's forehead. Azula still refused to ask for any pain killers, though she was certain she would pass out with each contraction. Even now when she was more vulnerable than ever, but she couldn't show any weakness.

A guard poked his head inside the room. Katara moved to shove him away, but he didn't leave.

"She's not going anywhere!" Katara said. "We're trying to bring a child into the world, show a little respect."

The guard glanced to make sure Azula was still lying on the bed, then looked at Katara. "I was ordered to at least check."

"We'll holler if we need you!" Katara said. "You can wait outside!"

The guard clenched his jaw with indignation and closed the door.

The night wore on in mostly silence, besides Azula who occasionally failed to repress a wails of pain that burst from her throat reflexively.

Katara would respond by offering her a drink of water, and then offering the medicine again. "We know it hurts. It's okay to admit that. You don't have to prove anything to me."

Azula would take the water, but never the medicine.

Katara passed the time mending socks in silence. She encouraged her patient in a soft voice to close her eyes and save her strength. "You'll need it."

The moon could be seen through the curtainless window, rising first and then falling. The only thing that broke the monotony was when Katara send the maidservant to fetch more water every now and then. But Yuko eventually fell asleep in a chair in the corner, unable to help it.

The contractions became noticeably worse. Azula could no longer pretend she could handle the pain. Finally she cried out in earnest. And Katara reacted the way Azula had dreaded she would.

"It's alright. You're doing just fine! If they're getting worse it's a sign it will be over soon. Just stay calm!"

"Stop it!" Azula said. "If I weren't in pain you would have gladly given me pain yourself. You would have had me thrown in a dungeon and tortured. I will not have it." She stopped, while another contraction ran over her body. She let out a genuine scream this time. She couldn't stop it, despising the sound coming from her own throat.

Katara sighed. It must have been awful in Azula's head, she thought, so mistrustful of everyone and everything around her, fearful to admit her own humanity for fear it would be used against her. "Just calm down, Azula," she said. "I'm here to help you." Katara put her hands on Azula's stomach. "Its head is about to drop," she said.

Azula realized she hadn't thought this far ahead. "You mean, it's getting ready..."

Katara smiled. "It will be over soon! You'll be a mother. Yuko, get me another cool cloth for her head, and bring me some of those clean towels as well."

"No," Azula said. "I don't need any help!" she scooted backwards when Katara reached for her hand.

"What, like you plan to deliver it yourself?"

"You certainly won't touch it!" Azula said. She stopped again, her entire body curling up in pain. "You won't touch it. Because as soon as you do, I'm never going to see it again."

Katara's eyebrows knitted together. Azula stared back at her.

"You... You're really worried about that..."

"What makes you think I wouldn't be. It's my own blood, healer!"

Katara took a deep breath. "Just a few hours ago you were willing to use your own blood as a practical human shield. You never told me you had any interest in raising the child yourself."

"It doesn't matter what you thought. You won't touch it!" Azula said. She fell back against the bed, crying out louder longer than she had all night.

Katara tried to get closer, but Azula wouldn't let her.

"Please, you're going to need my help," Katara said. "I promise you, I would never do that to you, let you bring a child into the world and never have the chance to hold it yourself. I couldn't do that to any of my patients!"

"If my brother were here that's exactly what he would make you would do. If he catches me holding it both of us will rue the day we ourselves were born." Azula struggled to catch her breath between words. "And... and you... you offer me a promise. Promises are useless. No one I know has ever kept one."

"What about me," Katara said. "When have I ever betrayed you?"

"Everyone does eventually. Your true loyalties are to my brother."

"I've decided to stay by yours side despite my friendship to him," Katara stepped forward. "When have you ever had reason to doubt me? Since you came home, when have I ever not been your advocate, even against him?"

Azula clutched at the sides of the bed. Her entire body felt like it was about to tear apart. Blood was rushing to her face. She could hardly breathe.

Katara took her hand finally. "You need my help."

Azula looked at Katara, then closed her eyes. Katara was right, through the entire time she had been home there had been one person at least worthy of her trust. And now she needed that person's help more than ever. She didn't let go of Katara's hand.

Katara charged the maidservant with keeping Azula cool while she waited to deliver the baby.

The labor began in earnest. Katara coached Azula through the next agonizing hours, telling her when to breath, when to bear down, holding her hand as her grip grew deathly tight. Azula no longer tried to suppress her cries. Sweat stained the bedsheets despite Yuko's attempts to cool Azula with the cloth.

Katara finally let go of Azula's hand when the child's head appeared, with thick black hair like its mothers. She washed her hands with rice wine and prepared a clean towel. And then came it's shoulders, and finally the rest of its tiny, thin, gray body, into the towel in Katara's arms.

Azula collapsed back onto the bed and closed her eyes, taking long, heavy breaths.

The baby was motionless, its eyes unopened. Katara used the towel to rub its tiny little limbs and torso hoping to invigorate it with the sensation. An eternity passed in breathless silence. Finally it opened its mouth, sputtered, and released a shrill cry.

Katara cut it free and wiped it clean before wrapping it in blanket. "Yuko, run and tell the rest of the house. We have a little boy."


	21. Chapter 21

The maidservant went to do as she was told.

"You should probably sit up," Katara said.

Azula lay on her side taking deep breaths, trying to ignore the lingering pain.

"You really should," Katara said. "I think you'll regret it if you don't."

Azula slowly rolled onto her back and forced herself up into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard. She didn't bother wiping the hair out of her wet face.

"Use one hand and support his head, and the other to hold up his body. He's not very heavy. Have you ever held a baby before?"

Azula shook her head.

"It's a pretty special experience."

She laid him in her patient's arms carefully, guiding her scarred hands to the right place.

As soon as he was in his mother's arms he stopped crying. Azula could feel his small weight on her chest, warm and limp, like bread dough, but alive with little limbs that moved restlessly. She could have easily killed him with her own hands, like breaking a twig, but she didn't Perhaps any other small creature she would have, but not this one. Feeling him against her chest affected her in a way she never had expected. There was just a little goop still on his cheek. She wiped it off with her thumb. She had not expected him to be so small, especially with the huge drama he had caused. She hadn't even expected it to be a _him_ to be honest, or even a _her_. She hadn't actually wondered which it would be, but she never wanted to put him down. He belonged in her arms.

"Do you have a named picked out?"

"No," Azula answered, her voice hoarse. She hadn't thought of that either. She'd been too concerned about what would happen to her.

"There will be plenty of time to think of a name," Katara said with a smile. "He's somewhat premature. We're going to have to keep a very close eye on him the next few weeks to make sure he's adjusting well to life on the outside. But he looks okay so far."

The baby opened his eyes to gaze hazily up at his mother's face. Azula felt her heart pound when she saw their amber color. "I can tell by his eyes," she said. "He's going to be strong, like his parents. He's going to do great things. He has my blood."

Katara looked at Azula's faint smile, her awe, as she looked down at her son. Katara wasn't sure what she thought about it. What she saw in Azula was pride, a reflection of herself, what Ozai had had for his daughter and what had caused him to twist his children into something they would have to live with forever. But there was something more than that too. Maybe. But she looked so happy, the way she held him so gently and tightly. Katara wasn't ready to call it love, but it was a reasonable start, and it was nothing she could object to.

"I just hope I didn't give him the worst parts of me," Azula continued. "I didn't bring him into this world to suffer."

"He'll have lots of people looking out for him," Katara said. "His blood is only half of the story."

"But it is half," Azula said. She sighed. "I cannot wait to leave this bed so I can show him to the entire world."

"We need to tend you're health first. You're losing some blood, which shouldn't be too bad if you let me use a little healing water."

"You can heal me whichever way you choose, but give me a minute first."

Azula stroked the infant's tiny head with her scarred hands. Katara inhaled sharply when she saw the red, deformed hand against the small helpless new creature. She remembered where Azula had gotten those scars, she remembered who she was dealing with. She didn't want to let it ruin the happy moment, but Katara could feel her heart sinking in her chest.

Zuko tried to sit outside the door. The time interval got to him first.

Aang shook his shoulder, giggling. "You fell asleep, buddy! You were totally drooling all over those formal clothes!"

"I've suffered worse indignities."

They found ways to pass the time, with conversation and counting tiles on the floor. But eventually Aang decided to go to bed, out of tiredness but also out of boredom. It wasn't his sister who needed the support. And Zuko was left to entertain himself.

He listened through the door. To long lingering periods of silence. To Katara and Azula arguing over pain medicine. Every now and then Yuko would leave the room, having been sent to fetch something. The young girl would give Zuko a small bow, and assure him everything was going well before running as fast as she could to complete her errand.

The time interval was bearable. But when time wore on, when the occasional whimper became moaning and then screaming, he couldn't handle it anymore. His first impulse was to burst in and try to comfort his sister. He could try and take her hand, try to lay a cool towel over her forehead, try to tell her it would pass. But the sound of her scream made him hate her all the more in a strange way. It was normal and natural for her to scream, but he still hated her for it. How dare she complain about pain after all the suffering he she had caused others? He would never get over the pain of his chest from when she had struck him with lightning. Hrio's sister would never get over the loss of her brother, and Hiro would never heal from his burns. Maybe he wouldn't take her hand. Maybe he'd box her ears and tell her to shut up and look at the bigger picture. And then after thinking this, he was overwhelmed by anger at himself for being so heartless, and for not being able to make up his mind on his own sister.

Hearing her cry out, she sounded so... human... and it always unsettled him to think of her as human, because most of the time she seemed to be something entirely different. He couldn't listen to it. He hated hearing her suffer, and he hated that he also somewhat enjoyed it. It was the same argument he'd been having with himself since she had fallen ill on the day of the comet, and it exhausted him. He decided to go to his office to tidy up from the fight, and see if he could get some work done.

He let down his hair and removed his heavy outer garbs before tending to the bits of broken glass and toppled stacks of paper. He then took out a brush and ink and wrote a response to a letter sent by a magistrate in the southern province. He had been procrastinating doing that for a while now.

The first hint of dawn was creeping through the window when Yuko finally knocked on his door. "The princess, Sir, she's had a son. Mother and child are expected to recover well with proper treatment."

Zuko looked up and rubbed the bones around his eyes to relieve the ache of sleeplessness. "Thank you," he said, trying to smile. "I'll be there in a moment. Tell the other servants."

When the girl was gone he opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a rumpled piece of parchment.

He had been wondering and wondering what type of gift he would get Azula after the baby was born. As little as he wanted to give her even the air she breathed, he was pretty sure it was customary to present gifts to new mothers. He couldn't think of any material thing she would have wanted, except for some type of weapon which he could not give her. And then he remembered his Captain's report from a few weeks ago. He had read it briefly, then shoved it under a pile of clutter so he would never have to look at it again, falsely hoping he'd forget what it contained. It was from the investigation of the institution where Azula had stayed for over a year.

After Azula had mentioned the ill treatment she had received there he had tried to shrug it off as one of her lies. But his nightmares had run wild, wondering what she had endured. When he finally did order the investigation, the worst of the nightmares had turned out to be true. The captain had ordered the hospital to be closed immediately, without waiting for further instructions from his higher-ups. That was described in the report too. Azula would want a copy of the report.

He put it in his pocket, got up and headed across the house, up the stairs to her bedchamber. He wasn't sure how she would react to it, but it was her business and she deserved to know. That would be his present to her.

Katara gave him permission to enter when he knocked.

The first thing he saw was the blood. On the bed and the floor around it, on the towels hanging nearby, on Katara's clothes.

"Did someone get killed?" he said.

Katara laughed. "I haven't had a chance to clean up yet."

He hadn't been joking, considering Azula was involved.

Azula looked up at him, fixating on him like a mad dog.

He saw the infant in her arms. When she noticed him eying the child, she clutched it closer to her chest.

His hands curled into fists.

"I fully expect the mother and child to recover just fine," Katara said. "I'm going to keep careful watch on the little guy for the next few weeks—"

Zuko interrupted "Are you alright!" he said to Katara. "Have you completely lost it! Are you as compromised as she is!"

Katara took a step back.

"You don't need to be here, Zuko!" Azula said. "Why did you let him in, Healer!"

"Apparently I do!" Zuko said. "Why would you let her hold it! What were you thinking, Katara!"

Katara held out her hands, she was tired. Her eyes were red and baggy and she looked like she desperately needed to sit, and now she had to diffuse a conflict. "This is supposed to be a joyous occasion," she said.

"A man is dead! And your letting his killer hold my nephew. There's nothing joyous about that."

"I'm letting a mother hold her son," Katara said.

"Get him out of here!" Azula said.

"I'm not going anywhere, not until I know that child is safe," Zuko said. He walked over to the bed though Katara tried to block him.

"All of us are tired," Katara said. "Just let her hold him for a while."

"She's going to kill him, Katara."

"She's doing just fine now," Katara said.

"Now. She's doing fine 'now.' Give it 5 minutes!"

Azula clutched the child even more tightly "Don't touch me." She kicked at him. He caught her foot and pined it to the bed. He held her down with one hand and with the other snatched the baby out of her arms. He used his shoulder to shove her back onto the bed when she tried to grab for the infant.

"Zuko!" Katara tried to grab Zuko's shoulders to look him in the eye, but he brushed her off.

"You can't trust her, Katara!"

"I wasn't going to hurt him!" Azula said. "You can't take him away. He's the only thing I have!"

Zuko gave Azula a mournful look. "I'm sorry, Azula!"

Azula, wincing, got off the bed. "You insist on humiliating me, treating me like a prisoner and an an incompetent animal! And you're taking away everything that I have. I'm going to challenge you then. To an Agni Kai! To the death!"

"I'm not playing your stupid game, Azula. I'm not going to duel you over a baby you logically shouldn't be allowed to touch, and I'm not doing it in your condition!"

Azula bared her teeth and screamed. With one quick movement she released a burst flame that moved over the room in a wave. Zuko turned so the flames would singe his back instead of hitting the baby. Katara blocked with the water from the nearby washbasin.

"Azula, we can talk about this later," Katara said, realizing she would not change Zuko's mind.

"Shut up! I knew you would do this!" She screamed. "I trusted you and I was wrong!"

Zuko grabbed Katara's hand and pulled her into the hall. Then he slammed the door behind them and locked it.

hrewAzula was left inside with her pain and her flames. There was a mighty thud on the door as she ther body against it.

"You treacherous rats!" she wailed. "Give him back!"


	22. Chapter 22

The pounding from inside the bedroom didn't stop. The doorknob turned from dull bronze to glowing red. Her attempt to break free was welding herself inside.

Zuko slumped against the wall. He still had the the little thing in his arms. The child was crying. Only 20 minutes old and already wrapped up in horrible drama typical of his family.

Katara squatted down next to him. "I hope you realize what you've done to her."

"She was ready to kill him! She didn't even think that maybe she would hurt him before she attacked me."

"You've just confirmed her greatest fears, Zuko, created a self-fulfilling prophesy. She wouldn't even let me help her deliver it until I promised I wouldn't take it away from her. I promised her she could hold him, and I let her. She was doing fine until you provoked her."

"I provoked her. So she almost killed all three of us and it was okay because I provoked her. What's going to provoke her next? When it won't stop crying, or when it spits up on her favorite dress or... speaks out of turn at a war meeting?"

There was more pounding, more screaming. Zuko scooted away from the door, fearing it would break down.

"Zuko! That was cruel. She's never going to be able to trust either of us ever again. Which means we now have no hope of ever saving her!"

"Tell me you never actually believed that, that she could be saved?"

"We saved you. There was good in you and in her too. Just like everyone. You should have seen the way she looked at him. There was potential in her to love him and care for him. The fact she was able to love Hiro in the first place proves she has potential."

"And that worked out well for him didn't it, letting her love him... What would you have me do, Katara, go back in there and apologize?

"It's too late! You can't fix this! You can't undo this!" Katara raised her voice. "You think about that while you're trying to sleep tonight, while she's in here down the hall, screaming like this till she goes hoarse! Because I doubt she'll ever be able to sleep ever again!"

"But the baby is safe, because of what I did. We're going to have to make a decision about him. I would keep him myself, but if she's in the palace he can't stay," Zuko said. He looked down at the baby which was still crying. Zuko's attempts to shush him were met with no success. He bounced the baby up and down in his arms. "It's okay... it's okay... no one will hurt you now... go to sleep. Come on, you can do it. Go to sleep..."

Katara stared at him, her jaw hanging open in disgust.

Zuko bit his lip and his hand resumed it's usual place over his eyes. His whole body started to quiver and heave. Meanwhile the noise from within the room started to fade.

"I talked to my mother. I stopped to visit her on my trip to Ba Sing Se," Zuko said, his voice cracking. He was actually crying. Water was seeping out between his fingers. "She told me everything that happened, everything us kids didn't see. She told me the cruelest thing her husband ever did was keep her kids from her. And now look at me. And I know it's sort of different, but... the look on Azula's face... What is wrong with me!" he said. "Every time I try to do the right thing it blows up in my face! No, correction. _I blow it up._ I guess I am my father's son at the end of the day."

Katara took a long deep breath. "No, Zuko... I'm not saying..." She put his hand on his shoulder. "You may be your Father's son. But you're also your mother's. She did some pretty awful things to keep you safe. And I guess you're just trying to do the same for this little guy. I'm not agreeing with you though. I can't support you in this. But you're not evil," she said. "Not even close."

"Promise me you'll keep working with her!" Zuko said. "That you'll keep trying to heal her. I don't even think it's possible but I don't want you to quit. I don't want her to have to live like this! She doesn't deserve it. Well... she does, but she's my sister!"

"I can try. But I can't heal her if she won't let me."

"Then what do we do!"

"We'll think of a plan," she said. She gave him forced, reassuring smile, the fake kind Zuko couldn't stand, but he didn't say anything about it.

She gave his arm a squeeze then stood up. "You find Junior a place to sleep. I have to go check on Azula. There could still be underlying complications, even though the baby's been born. She was losing some blood."

"You don't want to go in there alone," Zuko said.

"She's not going to want to see you." Katara said.

"I'm not sending you to your death by yourself, Katara."

He found Yuko waiting a few yards away in the hall. He put the baby in her arms. "Find him some blankets and some warm milk. We'll make more official arrangements for him later."

She didn't nod or bow this time. She wrinkled her eyebrows. "Is the princess going to be alright?"

"Probably not," he told her. "But that's not your concern now."

He rejoined Katara and they got ready to burst into the room.

No noise came from inside.

"That quiet can't be a good sign," Katara said. "She could have fainted from the exersion"

"Or she's planning something," Zuko said as he tested the knob.

It was still hot. Katara used a little water to freeze it. But even then it was still welded shut. The only option was to break the door down. They had ran into battle together enough times to know how to do that.

The room was empty.

Most everything had been knocked over from her fit of rage. How she had managed to do this while bleeding like she was was a mystery to Katara. The bars on the windows were welded open, wide enough for her to slip through.

Zuko ran to the window and checked the ground a few stories below. "She's not there."

"How did she manage to survive that fall!"

"By not falling. Maybe she could jet herself down, but I doubt she was in a state to generate the concentration for that. But she survived somehow. She always does."

Katara ran into the hall. "We have to get outside and track her."

Aang was disappointed the flowers he'd gotten Azula would not be needed, though Zuko rolled his eyes and pointed out she probably wouldn't have liked them anyway.

"But whether she likes them or not," Zuko said. "None of that is relevant until we find her. We need you to do an aerial search."

"She's just had a baby, she probably didn't get far," Aang said, trying not to get sick from worry.

"We hope not, but let's not forget..."

"Let's not forget who we're dealing with," Aang finished. "I know." He took his glider and headed up to the roof without bothering to put his shoes on first.

Zuko then went to find the captain of his guard. "Search the grounds, then the forest, and then the city. With mounted units and dogs. Perhaps she won't get far, but she'll go farther than you think she will, and she knows how to hide."

Katara appeared beside him, her shawl on her shoulder and boots on her feet. "We should go on foot," she said. "I found some support."

Behind her were the entire unit of Kyoshi Warrior Guards. Their commanding officer stepped forward.

"I know this is difficult for you, Zuko," Suki said. "After all your efforts to take care of your sister."

"And I know this can't be easy for you," Zuko. "After what she's done to you and your soldiers."

Suki gave a curt smile and pulled her fans from her belt, so she'd be ready to fight as soon as she stepped into the woods. "Whatever feelings I have toward Azula, I know she'll be safer when she's brought back into containment, and the world will be safer too. And perhaps for once in your life you'll be able to get some sleep."

"That's assuming she hasn't gone into shock out there," Katara said.

"Or shocked someone else." Suki unconsciously imitated the hand motions Azula used when generating lightning."We need to comb the woods from the outward in, cut off her escape routs. The mounted guards will help. Ty Lee, you'll probably have the easiest time taking her down, if she's able to put up a fight when we meet her."

Ty Lee looked down at her skirt. It was obvious by her face that she wanted to throw up.

Suki gave her a pat on the shoulder. "You can do this, Soldier."

Ty Lee nodded and followed as the group headed outside to begin the search.


	23. Chapter 23

Her body still burned from what it had just done. A wasted effort. Each step was painful, though eventually she went numb as she kept walking. That was something she had practiced thousands of times, hours of fire bending practice well past healthy limits, straight through the discomfort until there was only numbness. And in the end she was rewarded by not being something to be ashamed of.

She wished right now she could run.

It was freezing out. She should have brought a blanket. She had remembered her shoes at least. She made her way out of the garden and into thicker vegetation where there was more cover. She didn't dare stop to rest because she knew she would not want to keep moving after that.

Slowly it occurred to her it wasn't cold at all. It was blood. Soaking her clothes and making them cold and stiff, draining from her body and leaving her skin pale and her mind foggy.

Her foot became trapped. The mud enveloped it. She took a step forward, only to find her other foot caught as well. When she pried them lose the shoes were left behind. She didn't care to go back for them.

Maybe she should have gone back, all the way back. Maybe she should have let the awful healer address all this blood, and address her broken mind. Or maybe she'd just climb up to the window of the nursery and watch for a moment while some stranger, or perhaps her brother, sang to her son. Or she could keep going and think of a plan later.

Something glistened in the corner of her eye, and her barefoot fell straight into the water. There she was, after Azula hadn't seen her in so long. She had come back. Likely this time she would never leave.

"I don't know want with me," Azula said.

The princess who had come before her, clothed in red silk, hair braided and draped behind her back like a black waterfall and a face as well-formed and graceful as the birds that swam in the water she now occupied. She looked so sad. "We've been over this so many times, my little one."

"I don't know why you keep coming back, what you think you'll..." maybe it was from the confusion in her brain that had always been there, or maybe it was the blood loss, but Azula could hear her words slurring. "I don't know why you keep coming back to me. What you want me to do. There's no way you can understand what I've been through. We've been separated for so long."

The princess reached out her hand. "A young woman, eyes red with tears, when she should be enjoying the best years of her youth and beauty, leaves at dawn from the palace, in shame and misery. She leaves her flesh and blood in the hands of a man she does not trust. She knows that flesh and blood will grow up and wonder for years why she had to leave at all. No my darling, I don't suppose I do."

Azula's knees finally gave out. She sat down in the water. The freezing current carried a lot of the blood away but more blood replaced it. Eventually she would run out.

The Princess gave a small chuckle. "You want to know one more thing the two of us have in common?"

"Shut up!"

"We're both murderers."

"It's not like I had a choice about any of this!"

"You have more choice than I did. And you better make yours quickly, my dear, before time runs out."

Azula began to sob in earnest. "Mother, what do I do? I always know what to do and today I don't."

Her mother's eyes went wide and her jaw fell open in such deep, incomprehensible melancholy. "Oh my child," she said. "You know what I'm going to say. But you never listen."

Voices could be heard in the woods behind her, calling Azula's name. Azula turned instinctively, but then looked back down at the water, at the blank current and the rocks below it.

"No!" She slammed her fist into the river. "Come back and answer my question. Mother I don't know what to do. Please!" she screamed as loud as she could, though her voice was week. "Don't leave me. I don't know what to do!"

They searched until the sun was well above the horizon. The air changed from cool and breezy to thick and unrelentingly hot very quickly. They had not found a single clue and after several hours of searching, there was a heavy realization in the back of everyone's head that time was running out.

It was Ty Lee who found the first viable clue. She plucked it from where it had been imbedded in the forest floor. A single silken slipper. The other was not far off. She called the others over.

"It's not much to go on," she said.

Aang landed in front of her and took a look at it. "What direction was it facing? That will tell us where she went."

Ty Lee pointed northeast. Zuko ran passed her, following her finger.

Katara and Aang followed him as he shoved through waist high thorn bushes. He slipped in the mud as he made his way down a steep slope. He was in such a hurry he tripped over a branch, but then righted himself, dripping, ankle deep in the river. He paused and looked around.

No body said a word while he considered.

Finally he scrambled up the bank and started looking along the mud for human footprints. "Aang," he said, shouting over the rushing current. Water was high as rainy season was drawing to a close. "Fly over to the other side and see if she crossed.

"She wouldn't have made it if she tried," Aang said.

"She made it as far as those shoes," Zuko said.

"She _stumbled aimlessly_ into the bush as far as those shoes," Katara said.

Zuko clenched his fists, then continued to make his way along the bank. "She wouldn't give up, even if her body did."

Aang sighed and looked at the river, then glanced at Katara.

"You don't think..." he said to her.

She took a deep breath. "Zuko," Katara called.

"What are you doing!" he answered, still searching the bank. "Call the mounted guards and Kyoshi Warriors. She must have followed the river downstream! We have to keep looking."

"Zuko," Katara said again.

He poked his head up and turned to face her.

"Zuko, I don't think so," Katara said. She walked over to him and took his hand.

He yanked it away and scowled. "Well do you have a better explanation, Katara?"

She took a deep breath and glanced down at the roaring river. "The water is high," she said.

"No," Zuko said.

"The bank is steep and slippery. She was in a weakened state."

"I won't hear it!" Zuko said.

"Zuko."

"Stop it!" he shouted, his fists beginning to smoke. "Stop it and help me look! She made it, I know it! You forget-"

"Yes, I know what you're going to say. But you're the one who keeps forgetting who we're dealing with. We're dealing with a human being."

Zuko let his fists grow even hotter. He wanted to scorch Katara off the face of the earth, but there was no point in shooting the messenger. He turned on his heals and blasted a patch of cattails, with flames which roared almost loud enough to drown out the river. Then he let out one last yell of frustration.


	24. Chapter 24

The mounted guards continued to search the banks. Katara and Aang led Zuko, who was shaking and steaming uncontrollably, back to the palace for much needed food and rest.

The housekeeper made them soup and gave it to them in the privacy of the kitchen, but they couldn't eat it at all.

"There was no way we could have done this right," Zuko said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

Aang and Katara looked up from their soup.

Zuko kept going. "I kept thinking the whole time we were searching, what if I had followed Katara's advice, or what if I tried to do more of what Uncle would have done, or what Mother. Or even what even what Ozai would have done; that's how desperate I was. I played out every possibility in my head, starting with you bringing her to my doorstep, and all of them end with recovery a distant fantacy and mother and child separated. I could have made her happy, at the expense of putting each and every one of us at risk. Azula is just... she was not crazy, she was not evil, she was not 'a prodigy.' She was just doomed."

"No," Aang said. "No Zuko, no body's doomed. She's like you. She wasn't born... doomed. But she's been through a lot, and so have you. Who knows what it was that turned her down this path, but she wasn't hopeless, no one is... and... I'm not helping am I?"

Zuko laid his head down on the table. "I know, he said. "You all saved me. It should be simple enough to save her. But how can I do that, when the few things she wants are the things every human wants, and things I cannot give her?"

Katara sighed, like she had something she was holding back.

"You fought with me the whole way," Zuko said.

"I was going to say it, but I won't. It doesn't matter now," Katara said, getting up to dump her uneaten soup out.

"Well I want to hear it!" Zuko said.

"There was a way you could have done this right. You could have acted like her brother. You could have loved her." Katara said. "That was what she needed. That was what her companions in Ba Sing Se gave her that she never got in this house."

Zuko clenched his fists and avoided eye contact with his companions.

"Though I suppose that was unfair of me," Katara said. "Maybe you were wrong in how you treated her, but never once were you selfish."

At that moment the captain of the guard poked his head into the kitchen.

Zuko sat up. "What is it!" he said. "Any news."

The guard looked stiff. "On the search, Sire? It continues. We have no new clues." He coughed. "But... on your sister's letters..."

"The code-breaker?" Zuko said.

The guard handed Zuko an old letter, written in Azula's hand. It looked singed around the corners.

"There was no code, Sire," the guard said. "The messages were hidden much more cryptically."

Zuko laid the letter flat. The main body was written in black ink, but in the margin were brown words, in small strokes.

"Invisible ink?" Zuko said. "How did you allow her to get access to that! I thought we monitored everything that went into her room and out!"

"Lemon Juice," the guard said. "It is completely colorless on parchment until a flame is applied lightly behind it, when it singes and appears. I do recall the Princess was quite insistent on having lemons brought to her room in her fruit basket. The letters confiscated from your father's cell revealed a plan in the making for both of their escapes. Their plans after that are subject only to conjecture, but we can assume they would have been a threat to your safety."

Zuko stared at the letter, speechless.

"The maidservant, Yuko," the guard told her. "Her brother, he works for the prison, and apparently a system of information flow was established with the two of them as messengers. They used the different fruits that were delivered to her room as a code."

"But how did he see the messages?" Zuko said. "That's impossible. Ozai cannot fire-bend, how could he possibly have seen the messages! This is all a lie, Captain! You dare accuse my sister of such treason the day of her death."

"We don't know she's dead," Aang said.

"And you don't have any explanation of how it could have possibly happened! He cannot even fire bend!"

"Or, Sire," the guard said, trying not to roll his eyes. "Perhaps he used an oil lamp."

Zuko paused, and tried to calm himself down. "Of course, a lamp." he said. "And in the plans... what was her plan for the child?"

"She... never actually mentioned the child. Not the child, not her time away, not the treatment regiment Katara had prescribed."

"Thank you," he said to the guard. "You should rejoin the search. I want a report first thing tomorrow morning."

The guard bowed and ducked out of the room.

Zuko confronted the maidservant that night. He found her up in the nursery helping the child's new nurse finish preparing the room. He did not ask her for answers. He demanded them, at full volume with fists smoking. He had never heard more anger in his own voice. She didn't have any answers for him. He threatened to have her thrown out on the streets, banished, thrown in prison, but all she could tell him was that her brother had asked her to change the fruits, that he'd told her welfare of the entire nation depended on it.

The more angry he grew the more insistent she became, until she fell down at her king's feet, tears streaming down her face.

"Please! I didn't know," she told him. "I didn't know any of this!"

He took one last look at her face, pale with terror and wet. He paused. Yuko was only a child, no older than 13. He had been that age once, though he tried very hard to forget it. Azula had been that age once, and even she, with all the wiliness and ambition she had shown even then, she had still been a child. It had been a crueler, older person who had taught her to be the merciless villain she had become, and Zuko knew that if he had not been banished, that would have happened to him too. This young maid-servant hadn't known any better. She had been a pawn, like Azula had been to their father, and he was being unreasonable, like their father had been to him.

Zuko took a deep breath. His voice was beginning to shake. The nurse maid had seen him lose face, and he felt deep shame. "I believe you, Yuko," he said. "Though I cannot excuse your conduct. We will address that later."

Before he could turn to leave, the girl remembered her duties after all. She handed Zuko a letter she had found lying on Azula's desk, hidden under other papers. She pulled it from her sleeve with a shaking hand. He took it and popped the wax seal with his thumb.

It was for Mother. Azula had known her child would most likely be taken from her, and had written in desperation, asking for help from someone who would understand. "Please come!" it said. "I need your help." Zuko could not finish reading it. He had fulfilled his sister's prophesy in the least brotherly possible. One more reminder how badly he had messed this up. This was not the letter his mother would receive. She would get his confession instead.

The search party came up with nothing by nightfall. Aang tried to remind Zuko that they hadn't found a body, or evidence she'd been hurt, and that was something to be hopeful about. But Zuko only grew more sick due to the uncertainty. And when no news came by the next morning, Zuko tried retreating back to his bed chambers to hide as he was wont to do.

Katara would not allow this, urging him to go to the nursery to visit with his nephew. He finally agreed. Katara and Aang came with him.

The nurse maid fetched the child from it's bed and laid it in Zuko's lap. She then bowed and left them alone with the child. He was awake, having just been fed. He squirmed underneath the white blankets swaddling him.

"You are awfully cute," Zuko told the child when it looked up at him. "So many things I have left to do. I have to write your grandmother a very painful letter. I have to track down your father's sister and tell her you are here and you are safe. I have to see to your grandfather is punished for his conspiracies as well as his guard. I have to face the fact I failed your mother. I failed her, and because of that you may never know her." He sighed. "But I can't worry about those things now. For now I'm going to worry about you."

"A name," Aang said.

"I feel horrible naming him before we find out what became of her. I've been trying to think of names both of us would like, if there were people whom both of us respected, things both of us valued. But I can't think of anything both I and Azula liked except fried noodles with curry and I'm not naming him that."

Aang giggled. "Fried Noodles with Curry! A new prince of the Fire Nation, third in line for the throne!"

"Second," Zuko said. "I don't think Azula is coming back, and unless I have a child of my own, he's going to be next."

Katara put her hands on Zuko's shoulder. "We'll get our answers soon enough."

"You could name him for his father?" Aang suggested.

"Not a traditional name for royalty," Zuko said, "though I don't particularly care to name him after any of the men in our family."

"Avoiding those names won't avoid the fact he has their blood," Katara said.

"You're not helping, Katara," Zuko said. He got up to return the infant to it's bassinet, gently laying it in the blankets so that it could sleep in peace. "Though, you're not wrong." Zuko straightened out his sweaty clothes he had not yet had a chance to change. "You two should get some rest. I imagine you'll want to go back to the Earth Kingdom soon, since, Katara, your tenure as my sister's healer has come to an end. You don't need to burden yourselves with me any longer. But I have to get back to work."

"You need to rest too," Aang said.

"I need to finish replying to the Magistrate from the Southern Province on the issue of estate taxes, is what I need to do," Zuko said. "Either we'll find Azula or we won't. But that won't undue any of the mistakes I made with her. And it won't make it any it any easier for me to raise her child. And it won't solve the problem of estate taxes. Human beings are messy. I have to accept that and do my job."

"Well," Katara said. "Don't over-exert yourself. Nothing about the next several days is going to be easy."

"I don't expect it to be," Zuko said. He stopped at the door to the nursery. "Thanks," he said. He turned back to look at them with a sad smile. "For all your help."

Katara and Aang returned the sad smile. Zuko headed back to his office.

"You don't actually think she's gone forever, do you?" Aang said.

"The chances are slim she's okay, but something tells me, an instinct, that she is. She always manages to astound us." Katara said.

She got up and went over to the bassinet, then laid her hand over the infant's forehead to check for a fever. There wasn't much left they could do to help. She would watch the infant for the next few days, then pass the task off to the Royal physician. Aang would likely spent the next few days aiding in an aerial search, but the chances of finding any clues would decrease with each passing hour. They would have to go back to the Earth Kingdom soon. There was always more work to be done. Life would continue.

"Whether that means we'll actually find her..." Katara said. "It's Zuko I'm worried about. You know what he's like. He'll try to move on, do the very best he can for the child and for his country. But he's not going to be able to sleep till they do. Family is family."

The End


End file.
